o that we see only his
little head in a plain night-cap, surrounded indeed by the gilded nimbus
of his saintship, which we hope was not of tangible substance, as it
would have been an appendage very inconvenient to all parties concerned.
The mother reposes in a bed with high posts and long curtains. She must
have been a woman of strong nerves to have borne the sight of such
stupendous head-gears as those in which her attendants are nid-nodding
over herself and baby, or to have supported the weight of that which she
wears by way of night-cap. One nurse raises the lady, while another,
who, from her showy dress, appears to be the head of the department,
offers a tall, elegant, but very inconveniently-shaped goblet, which
contains, we presume, mediaeval gruel. The room has a very comfortable
aspect, from which we judge that some babies in those times were
carefully attended.

Many centuries ago, a young woman sat one day among the boys to whom she
had come, as their father's bride, from a foreign land, to take the name
and place of their mother. She showed to them a beautiful volume of
Saxon poems, one of her wedding-gifts,--perhaps offered by the artists
of the court of Charles le Chauve, of whose skill such magnificent
specimens yet exist. As the attention of the boys was arrested by the
brilliant external decorations, Judith, with that quick instinct for the
extension of knowledge which showed her a true descendant of
Charlemagne, promised that the book should be given to him who first
learned to read it. Young Alfred won the prize, and became Alfred the
Great.

We are brought near to the presence of a woman of the Middle Ages when
we stand beside the monument of Eleanor of Castile, queen of Edward I.,
in Westminster Abbey. The figure is lifelike and beautiful, with flowing
drapery folded simply around it. The countenance, with its delicate
features, wears a look of sweetness and dignity as fresh to-day as when
sculptured seven hundred years ago. The hair, confined by a coronet,
falls on each side of her face in ringlets; one hand lies by her side,
and once held a sceptre; the other is brought gracefully upward; the
slender fingers, with trusting touch, are laid upon a cross suspended
from her neck.

Historians have done their best, or their worst, to throw doubt upon the
story of Eleanor's sucking the poison with her lips from the arm of her
husband when a dastardly assassin of those days struck at the life of
Edwar