of seeing him, and touched the heart of James by that fragile beauty and by the affection that shone in her soft eyes. It was a marriage that no one approved, for her days were known to be numbered. But perhaps some faint hope that happiness, that potent physician, might arrest disease, as it has been known to do, prevailed both with the anxious father and the young man beloved, in whom tender pity and gratitude replaced a warmer sentiment. At all events the marriage took place in Paris, in the noble church of Notre Dame, in the beginning of the year 1537. The King, we are told, sent to Scotland to invite a number of other noblemen and gentlemen to attend his wedding, which was performed with the greatest pomp and splendour. Not until May did the young couple set out for their home, and then they were laden with gifts, two ships being presented to them, a number of splendid horses fully caparisoned, and quantities of valuable tapestries, cloth of silver and gold, and jewels of every description. Perhaps the long delay was intended to make the journey more safe for the poor young Queen. The voyage from Dieppe to Leith lasted five days, and the bridal party was accompanied by an escort of "fiftie ships of Scottismen, Frenchmen, and strangers." "When the Queen was come upon Scottis eard, she bowed her down to the same, and kissed the mould thereof, and thanked God that her husband and she were come safe through the seas." There could not be a more tender or attractive picture. How full of poetry and soft passion must the gentle creature have been who thus took possession of the land beloved for her young husband's sake! The Scottish eard indeed was all that she was to have of that inheritance, for in little more than a month the gentle Magdalen was dead. She was laid in the chapel of the palace which was to have been her home, with "ane dolorous lamentation; for triumph and merriness were all turned into dirges and soul-masses, which were very lamentable to behold." This sad story is crowned by Pitscottie with a brief note of the death of the Duc de Vendome's daughter, "who took sick displeasure at the King of Scotland's marriage that she deceased immediately thereafter; whereat the King of Scotland was highly displeased, thinking that he was the occasion of that gentlewoman's death." Other historians say that this tragical conclusion did not occur, but that the Princess of Vendome was married on the same day as James. Pitscottie's is the more romantic ending, and rounds the pathetic tale.