triumph; cloth of gold, and spices, saffron, and wax for tapers, were provided in large quantities for her majesty's offerings at all the churches on the road. Splendour of all kinds reigned around, and Mary must have been in her glory. This was the kind of life which the Princess led; and she led it bravely. Wherever she went, save in the actual presence of royalty, her equipage eclipsed the splendour of everybody else. She herself travelled sometimes on horseback, sometimes in a litter. Three harbingers preceded to prepare for her due reception on the road; thirty horses, provided for her damsels, give some notion of the number of her female attendants; besides which she had four charioteers, six grooms, two sumpterers, and eight pages. That she might be secure against any accidental annoyance to a pampered palate, there followed in her train a wagon drawn by three horses, and laden with a cooking apparatus. Her offerings bore a proportion to the splendour of her retinue. An ouche of gold, adorned with a garnet in the centre, and set round with six emeralds, is mentioned as her gift on one occasion; and the nature of others may be inferred from the circumstance that she ruined her goldsmith by the amount she ran in her debt, and

the length of time she obliged him to wait for his money. In truth, she was over head and ears in debt all her life long, notwithstanding the rules of her monastic order provided against costliness in her own personal apparel. Cut off from the display of scarlet mantles, cloth of gold and velvet, and also from personal ornaments and jewellery, still the unconquerable passion for expense found a vent; not only was she conspicuous for the luxuries of her table, and the beauty of her stud, but the furniture of her apartments, and the equipments of her household were converted into admirable vehicles for spending money. "Her bed was hung with velvet and tapestry, and furnished with the finest linen; and the green benches with which her apartment was surrounded on three sides were provided with cushions of the softest down." Linen for her table and pantry, poured in by hundreds of ells at a time: and added to all this she gambled. But she was a lover of minstrelsy and a patron of literature. Mary survived all her brothers and sisters of the whole blood, and died at Amesbury, in 1332, in the fifty-fourth year of her age.-Abridged from a review in the Gentleman's Magazine of Mrs. Green's Lives of the Princesses of England.

Chess.

"Low in their chest the mimic troops are laid,
And peaceful sleeps the vanquished hero's shade."

SOLUTION TO PROBLEM IN LAST NUMBER. | tainment at his favourite game. He accordingly en

quired into the state of his family affairs; and, without discovering his title, thanked him and departed.

Some months elapsed, and the clergyman never thought of the matter, when, one evening, a footman rode up to the door, and presented him with a note:"The Duke de Nivernois' compliments wait on the Rev. Mr. "" and as a remembrance of the good drubbing he gave him at chess, begs that he will accept the living of -, worth £400 per annum; and that he will wait upon his grace the Duke of Newcastle, on Friday next, to thank him for the same."

The clergyman was some time before he could imagine it to be any more than a jest, and hesitated to obey the mandate; but, as his wife insisted on his making a trial, he went up to town, and, to his unspeakable satisfaction, found the contents of the note literally true.

WHEN the Duke de Nivernois was ambassador to England, he was going to a nobleman's seat, in Norfolk, on a private visit, with only one servant, a heavy storm coming on obliged him to take shelter at a farm-house. The master was a clergyman, who, to a poor curacy, added the care of a few scholars in the WHEN Lord Sunderland was at the Hague, he conneighbourhood; which, in all, made his living about tracted a particular intimacy with Mr. Cunningham, £80 a-year; and this was all he had to maintain a the critic and editor of Horace; both were remarkable wife and six children. When the Duke alighted, the chess-players. Whenever his Lordship was at leisure, clergyman, not knowing his rank, begged him to he either drove to Cunningham's lodgings, which come in and dry himself; which the other accepted, were at some distance, or sent his carriage for him. by borrowing a pair of stockings and slippers, and After playing for a course of time, Lord Sunderland warming himself by a good fire. After some conver- discovered that he who was jolted in the carriage sation, the Duke observed an old chess-board hanging before they sat down, was sure to lose every game; up; and, as he was passionately fond of the game, he for this reason, he declined going to Cunningham's, asked the clergyman whether he could play. The but always sent for him, and always beat him, to his latter told him that he could play pretty tolerably, no small astonishment, as he was conscious that he but found it difficult, in that part of the country, to understood the game as well as his adversary. At get an antagonist. "I am your man," says the last, when he was very much out of humour, Lord Duke. "With all my heart," answers the clergyman; Sunderland told him the trick; and Cunningham "and if you will stay and partake of my humble fare, insisted that they should drive to each other's lodgI will see if I cannot beat you." The day continuing ings alternately, which confirmed his Lordship's obrainy, the Duke accepted his offer; when his anta-servation; for, from that time, they won and lost gonist played so much better, that he won every game. This was so far from fretting the Duke, that he was pleased to meet a man who could give so much enter

alternately. It must be borne in mind, that the streets of the Hague were not, in the last century, so smooth as those of London are at present.