from such strict confinement; and at length her impoverished father came to her partial relief, and by sacrificing his inheritance of Provence, he succeeded in securing her release from imprisonment, she having signed a formal renunciation of all the rights her marriage in England had given her. But this poor faded Red Rose had one more trial to bear. A dry leprosy now attacked the once beautiful Margaret of Anjou, and transformed the lovely “Marguerite,” whose beauty had been celebrated throughout the world, into a loathsome spectacle of horror. For nearly six years she endured a living death in the castles provided by her father for her retreat, until, in 1482, the welcome summons came. She was buried in the cathedral of Angers, and her only memorial was her portrait on glass in a window of the cathedral, which had been painted by her father twenty years before. Maria Louisa, the second wife of Napoleon I., possessed the breviary once owned by Margaret of Anjou: in it was written, “_Vanite des vanites, tout la vanite!_” Surely a fitting epitaph for the once beautiful, powerful, lovely Margaret of Anjou, queen of England; but alas! afterwards, the fallen, faded, hapless Red Rose of English history. Among the warm partisans of the Lancastrian cause, was John Grey, afterwards Lord Ferrers, whose wife was the beautiful Elizabeth Woodville, maid of honor at the court of Queen Margaret. Lord Ferrers lost his life in the War of the Roses; and his widow, the beautiful Lady Grey, afterwards married Edward, son of the renowned Duke of York, the champion of the White Rose. By this marriage of the Roses, which occurred after Edward had become king of England, as Edward IV., this famous War of the Roses ended in a match of hearts. CATHARINE OF ARAGON. A.D. 1485-1536. “By my troth, I would not be a queen! Verily, I swear, ’tis better to be lowly born, And range with humble livers in content, Than to be perk’d up in a glistering grief, And wear a golden sorrow.”—SHAKESPEARE. BEAUTIFUL Granada rose like an enchanted city in the midst of the blooming plain, where flourished the citron and the pomegranate, the latter of which gave to the city its euphonious name. Olive groves and vineyards clustered around it and fig-trees hung heavy with their purplish fruit; while orange and lemon groves bent ’neath the rich burden of golden spheres of luscious nectar, intermingled with the snowy blossoms which, half hidden amongst the dark green foliage, filled the air with such exquisite perfume as to make one dream of the ambrosial fields of Paradise. To the north, towered mountains whose lofty, snow-crowned summits seemed to pierce the blue heavens above, and other ranges guarded it on the east and south, while the blue waters of the Mediterranean washed its western shores, and brought trade and commerce to this fair Eden of sunny Spain.