er winds were cold as the royal cortege, with knightly escort,
wended its way across the barren heights of Central Spain into the
beautiful valley of Andalusia, across the lovely vega, past Santa Fe, up
the rugged slope of the acropolis of Granada into the Chapel Isabella,
near the unrivalled Alhambra. Here in the very heart of the last Moorish
capital, while the whole nation mourned, they laid all that was mortal
of the great queen, whom Lord Bacon has named "the corner-stone of the
greatness of Spain."

Twelve years later, January 23, 1516, they laid King Ferdinand beside
her, "the wisest king that ever ruled in Spain." (Prescott.) Their
grandson, Charles V., now summoned the finest artists in the world to
prepare royal mausoleums for Ferdinand and Isabella and for his parents,
Joanna of Castile and Philip of Burgundy. The cathedral of Granada is
the Spanish temple of victory. It covers the site of an ancient Moorish
mosque. Within its royal chapel one may read, in bas-relief, the whole
story of the reconquest of Spain. On either side of its high altar kneel
the life-size statues of the final conquerors; while in solemn, stately
magnificence, the royal mausoleums of purest Carrara marble, with their
reclining portrait figures of Ferdinand and Isabella in soft,
time-tinted alabaster, tell us that here the nation, "redeemed from
bondage," laid their deliverers to rest. And here, at the close of
nearly four hundred years, a hand from across the sea lays this tribute,
with a garland of white roses and a wreath of olive leaves and
immortelles, upon the tomb of ISABELLA OF CASTILE.

[Signature of the author.]

NICHOLAS COPERNICUS

By JOHN STOUGHTON, D.D.

(1473-1543)

[Illustration: Copernicus. [TN]]

The life of Nicholas Copernicus furnishes a signal example of the
accordance between profound religious sentiment and the utmost
inquisitiveness respecting the secrets of nature and the laws of the
universe.

The birthplace of genius is sometimes found nestled amid the fairest
scenes, and the opening years of life are favored with appeals to
curiosity and imagination, such as stimulate the exercise of the
intellect; but the lot of Copernicus, as a boy, was cast in one of the
flattest, tamest, and most uninteresting parts of Germany. Not far from
the banks of the Vistula, on the way to the free city of Dantzic, lies a
fortified town named Thorn, where the river is crossed by a wooden
bridge, and the place is