LADY JANE GREY.

EDITORIAL.

THIS accomplished but unfortunate female was born in 1537, of royal descent. She was the daughter of Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset, and Mary, youngest sister of Henry VIII. She was beautiful in person, amiable in disposition, refined in manners, and distinguished alike for her superior talents and acquirements.

John Dudley, afterward Duke of Northumberland, was appointed a kind of joint regent during the minority of Edward VI. Being a man of unbounded ambition, he sought to consummate his aspiring schemes by marrying his youngest son, Lord Guilford Dudley, to Lady Jane Grey. The marriage ceremony was performed amid the greatest splendor, when the bride was sixteen years of age, as represented in our beautiful engraving. This alliance, though brought about from political motives, proved to be one of strong mutual attachment.

During the last illness of the youthful king, he was pursuaded, by the Duke of Northumberland, to settle the crown, by will, on Lady Jane Grey, to the exclusion of his two sisters, Mary and Elizabeth ; the intention of the Duke being to reign himself, in the name of his daughter-in-law.

On the death of Edward, claims to the throne were preferred by the friends of two candidates, Mary, the legitimate heir, and Lady Jane Grey, as proposed in the will of the late sovereign. Lady Jane was first proclaimed queen without her knowledge or consent. Overborne, however, by the entreaties of her father and her husband, she yielded. Her pageant reign lasted but nine days, when Mary was acknowledged sovereign of the people, and sustained by the voice of the nation and the power of the army. Lady Jane was now obliged to exchange a palace for a prison. In all the bloom of youth she was led forth to execution, her husband having suffered the same fate an hour before. On witnessing his headless body carried back from the place of execution, she wrote a few sentences in her table-book, to this effect, that if she had committed an offence her youth and inexperience must excuse her, and that she trusted God and posterity would show her favor. On the scaffold she addressed the spectators,

alleging that the offence for which she was about to suffer did not consist in ambitiously grasping the crown, but in not resisting it with sufficient constancy, when others sought to place it on her

brow. Having closed this, with a serene countenance she laid her

head upon the block, and met her fate like a Christian.

THE STEP.MOTHER.

BY DR. JOHN C. M'CABE.

THEY tell me I am motherless! they said my mother died
When I was but an infant child, and that I sobbed and cried.
They tell me, too, that she who sets me often on her knee
yet she is a mother kind to me.

Is not my mother,

Her face is very saintly calm, her eye is very mild, —

She kisses me full oft, and says I am "her pretty child!"

And often when she thinks I sleep, her soft hand, pale and fair,
Is laid upon my infant brow, and then she breathes a prayer.

When sickness o'er my frame hath spent its very weakening powers,
She culls for me, and brings them in, spring's earliest, sweetest flowers;
And when my racking fevers rise, and soothing draughts I'd sip,
She gently raises up my head, and cools my parching lip.

And when she sees that slumber's veil is gathering o'er my eye,
She pats my cheek, and sings to me the soothing lullaby.
And oh! I dream so sweetly then of angels' visits here,
And wake, and find it true, for she, sweet one, is hovering near.

And when I get my little books, she learns me how to spell,
Till words so difficult to call I learn so very well;

And then she sweetly kisses me, and smooths each straggling curl,
And makes me love her when she says, "You are my own sweet girl."

Mother, I love her! from thy home 'mid Heaven's eternal rest,
Where tears of anguish never fall, nor sorrows heave the breast,
I know thou 'It smile to see thy child hath found a mother's love
In one whose dove-like spirit shall mingle with thine above.

TREAT every one with respect and civility. "Everything is gained, and nothing lost, by courtesy." Good manners insure success.

HARRY BEACH.

73

HARRY BEACH.

BY MRS. 8. S. ALLEN.

It was a cheerless winter night when Harry Beach walked slowly down a street in one of the large towns in Western New York. Flakes of snow were driven rudely against his face, and the northeast wind pierced like sharp arrows through his clothes, yet he quickened not his pace, and when he came to his father's door he stopped, and stood several minutes before opening it. A sad change had come over Harry. A few years ago, he was the gayest, most lighthearted boy in the school. Nobody could learn a lesson so quickly, or recite it so correctly as Harry. And when school was out, no one ran to the ball-alley in summer, or the skating-pond in winter, with such a gleesome bound, as Harry. And when, tired with play or warned by the hour, he turned homeward, no one ever brought to the domestic hearth such a fund of innocent mirth, or gladdened a mother's heart with such an overflowing of affectionate joyousness. Now he stood silent and sad on the door-step of his father's house, the cold storm beating against him, and slowly filling his hair and neck with particles of sleet and snow.

What was Harry thinking about? He was thinking of the time when his own dear mother was there to welcome him in her cheerful little sitting-room; to kiss him, to smile upon him with love and pride; to encourage him in all that was innocent and good; to stand his friend with his somewhat stern and exacting, though upright and conscientious father; in short, to be to him what a judicious and tender mother can only be to a young and loving heart, and to make his home, what no one else can make it, a garden, where the noxious weeds are cleared away so carefully, where the dews of instruction fall so gently, where the sun of love shines so clearly, that good tendencies and happy feelings spring up and grow as naturally as flowers in a rich and genial soil. He thought of the time when this dear mother sickened and died, and had been carried one cold winter's day, four years before, and laid beneath the snow; of the desolate days which followed this sad event; of the hope which had sprung up in his heart, when, a year later, his father had brought to his