but a child as yet, but already her striking beauty and sweetness had endeared her beyond compare to the French populace. Brantome and other contemporary writers describe her personal appearance, but her own wise letters to her mother, her brother, and to her friend and sister, Mary Stuart, speak more eloquently still of her mental gifts, and explain the undoubted influence she gained over the spirit of her husband, who, notwithstanding the disparity of their years, loved her deeply, and mourned her sincerely when she died. The marriage rejoicings in Paris were brought to a sudden and untoward conclusion by the accidental killing of the King of France, Henry II., by a thrust in the eye at a tourney, at the hands of Montgomeri, captain of the Scots Guard. Philip was still in Belgium, immersed in anxiety and trouble. Already the want of sympathy between himself and his Flemish subjects was bearing its natural fruit. Heresy was raising its head there as elsewhere. The Netherlands had on more than one occasion felt the heavy hand of the emperor both in matters of religion and in the autonomous privileges of the various states which constituted the dominions of the House of Burgundy. But Charles was one of themselves, and from him they would suffer much. With Philip, ostentatiously a foreigner, it was a very different matter, and all attempts from him, however innocent, towards the centralisation of power, which was the kernel of his system, were tacitly resented by them. The commercial and geographical position of the Netherlands, in constant touch with England and Germany--the highway between them indeed--especially exposed the country to the influence of the new religious ideas; and in Holland, at least, the Protestant doctrines had before Philip’s accession obtained firm root. The person of the new monarch was not popular with the Flemings. His dislike of noisy enthusiasm, his coldness and reserve, his preference for Spaniards, had already widened the breach that his first appearance had occasioned, and his people were almost eager to place a bad interpretation upon all he did. His first step, if it had been taken by another sovereign, would have been a popular one, but with him it was the reverse. The three bishoprics of the Netherlands were unwieldy, and a considerable portion of the country was under the ecclesiastical control of German bishops. Philip desired to remedy this by the re-division of the various dioceses and the creation of fourteen new bishops and three archbishops, the lands of the monasteries being appropriated for the support of the new prelates. Philip had endeavoured to keep his plans secret, but they leaked out, and at Philip’s farewell visit to the States-General at Ghent, on the eve of his departure for Spain, the members of the assembly denounced in no uncertain terms the implied policy of Philip to rule them according to Spanish instead of Flemish ideas. The severe edicts of the emperor against heresy had been