royal young man whom (as the Jacobites doubtless told her) only the foolish and traitorous obstinacy of his followers had prevented from reinstating his father on the throne of England. Historical figures, especially those of a heroic sort, remain pictured in men's minds at their moment of glory; and this was the case particularly with the Young Pretender, who had disappeared into well-nigh complete mystery after his wonderful exploits and hairbreadth escapes of the '45; so that in the eyes of Louise of Stolberg the man she was about to marry appeared most probably but little changed from the brilliant youth who had marched on foot at the head of his army towards London, who had held court at Holyrood and roamed in disguise about the Hebrides. Still, it is difficult to imagine that as the hours of meeting drew nearer, the little Princess, as her travelling carriage toiled up the Apennine valleys, did not feel some terror of the future and the unknown. The spring comes late to those regions; in the middle of April the blackthorn is scarcely budding on the rocks, the violets are still plentiful underneath the leafless roadside hedges; scarcely a faint yellow, more like autumn that spring, is beginning to tinge the scraggy outlines of the poplars, which rise in spectral regiments out of the river beds. Wherever the valley widens, or the road gains some hill-crest, a huge peak white with newly-fallen snow confronts you, closes in the view, bringing bleakness and bitterness curiously home to the feelings. These valleys, torrent-tracks between the steep rocks of livid basalt or bright red sandstone, bare as a bone or thinly clothed with ilex and juniper scrub, are inexpressibly lonely and sad, especially at this time of year. You feel imprisoned among the rocks in a sort of catacomb open to the sky, where the shadows gather in the early afternoon, and only the light on the snow-peaks and on the high-sailing clouds tells you that the sun is still in the heavens. Villages there seem none; and you may drive for an hour without meeting more than a stray peasant cutting scrub or quarrying gravel on the hill-side, a train of mules carrying charcoal or faggots; the towns are far between, bleak, black, filthy, and such as only to make you feel all the more poignantly the utter desolateness of these mountains. No sadder way of entering Italy can well be imagined than landing at Ancona and crossing through the Apennines to Rome in the early spring. To a girl accustomed to the fat flatness of Flanders, to the market-bustle of a Flemish provincial town, this journey must have been overwhelmingly dreary and dismal. During those long hours dragging up these Apennine valleys, did a shadow fall across the mind of the pretty, fair-haired, brilliant-complexioned little Canoness of Mons, a shadow like the cold melancholy blue which filled the valleys between the sun-smitten peaks? And did it ever occur