signal for a general mourning at St. Petersburg; and, while Admiral Spiritoff assumed the command of the fleet, the Empress ordered the funeral of her favourite officer to be conducted with a pomp, solemnity, and magnificence never before witnessed in Russia.

The funeral took place on the 5th of December. Some days before it, the body lay on a state bed in the hall of the Admiralty, which was hung with black cloth; while the doors were festooned with white crape, and the vast apartment was lighted by silver lustres. Under a canopy of crape, the body was placed on three small arches, dressed in full uniform, the head being encircled by a wreath of laurel. At its foot stood an urn, adorned with silver anchors and streamers, inscribed

"S. G. Nat. d. 30 Nov., 1735-obit d. 15 Oct., 1788."

The coffin stood on six feet of massy silver. It was covered with black velvet, lined with white satin; the handles and fringes were of pure silver, and the pillows of blonde lace. On three tabourettes of crimson and gold lay his five orders of knighthoodone of them, the St. George's Cross, mutilated by a shot in the Archipelagoand around were twelve pedestals, covered with crape and flowers, bearing twelve gigantic candles. At the head of the bed hung all his flags; and two staff officers and six marine captains were constantly beside it until the day of interment, when Lieutenant the Baron Vanden Pahlen pronounced a high eulogy in honour of the brave deceased.

The cannon of the ramparts and fleet fired minute-guns during the procession from the Admiralty to the

Cathedral of St. Catherine, through streets lined by the troops. The funeral pageant was very magnificent and impressive.

Swartzenhoup's dragoons, with standards lowered; the grenadiers of the Empress, with arms reversed; the public schools of the capital; the clergy of the Greek Church; General Lehman, of the marine artillery, and two marshals bearing Greig's admiral'sstaff and five orders of knighthood; eighteen staff officers, and three bearing naval standards, preceded the body, which was borne on a bier drawn by six horses, led by six bombardiers, and attended by twelve captains of ships, followed by their coxswains. Then came General Wrangel, Governor of the city, with the nobles, citizens, the marshals with their staves, and a regiment of infantry with arms reversed, and its band playing one of those grand dead-marches which are peculiar to Russia. So, with a band of choristers preceding it, and amid the tolling of bells, the remains of Admiral Greig were conveyed to the Great Cathedral, and there lowered into their last resting place, amid three discharges of cannon and musketry from the ramparts, the troops, and the fleet, where he was so well beloved and so much lamented.

Every officer who attended had a gold ring presented to him by Catherine II., with the Admiral's name and the day of his death engraved upon it; and a magnificent monument has since been erected to mark the place where he lies a man "no less illustrious for courage and naval skill, than for piety, benevolence, and every private virtue.'

His estate in Livonia is still in possession of his descendants.

WHO does not love the LILIES? Other flowers there are more rich in perfume and more splendid in colours, and some there are as graceful, but none more stately. Other flowers seem to challenge our admiration, or to claim our affections as a right, but there is an air of calm dignity about lilies. While we love and admire, we feel that we also respect them. Other flowers display themselves in various pleasing attitudes; some meekly bending, some timidly seeking support, some gracefully reclining, like maidens of divers characters of loveliness; but there is something statue-like in the proudly erect form of the lily. The name • lilium" is derived from the Greek lirion (aug), signifying slender and elegant.

A vase full of lilies is like a casket of floral gems. There are those large, pure, spotless pearls, the white lilies and the seed pearls, the little lilies of the valley, all the various shades of the topaz, from the yellow day lily to the deeper tinted water lily, and the still darker orange; the amethyst and ruby of the purple and rich red martagon lilies; and the emerald diadem of the "crown imperial.”

Lilies may be styled religious flowers they were the symbols of purity and of benediction, wherefore they were figured on the pillars of Solomon's Temple and on the great candlestick (as seen on the Arch of Titus in Rome); they are used as similes of beauty in the Canticles; they have been honoured by being made a vehicle of instruction by our Lord in his Sermon on the Mount; the Scriptural name, Susanna, signifies a lily; and the cup of the white lily furnished to the Church the model for the consecrated silver chalice.

The pure WHITE LILY (lilium candidum), though not so magnificent as many of its sisters, is the most beautiful and the most dear to the feelings. At night, in the garden, when the rest of Flora's children are closed, or drooped, or scarcely visible among the gloom, the spotless lily shines conspicuous, unsleeping and dignified. Among the foliage upon earth, it is like what the silvery moon is among the clouds in the sky. We may term it the Moon of the Garden; it is pre-eminently the flower of the night, the flower of the feelings.

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As the flower of the Virgin, the white lily has been made more than once the badge of an order of Spanish knighthood. Garcias VI., King of Navarre, was lying dangerously ill at Najara, his native city. At the time when he appeared to be at his utmost extremity, a miraculous lily was said to be found growing near the city, in the flower of which appeared, as if issuing from the calix, an exact representation of the Virgin Mary with the Infant Saviour. From the time of this discovery, Garcia began to recover; and in gratitude to the Virgin, whose interposition in his favour he believed to be evidenced by the supernatural flower, he founded, for the reception of the latter, near the spot where it was seen, a monastery for monks of the order of Clugny, and a church called St. Maria Neale de Najara, where miracles were said to be wrought by the lily, in whose further honour he instituted, in 1048, the "Order of the Lily," consisting of thirty-eight knights of the noblest blood of Navarre, Biscay, and Old Castile, who were bound by their vows to peril to the utmost

life and possessions in warring against the Moors. The medallion of the order was an oval, bearing a lily of gold and white enamel, springing from a green stalk, and having on the head of the flower the initial of Mary in the Gothic character (like the Greek phi, 9, but that the middle stroke is not prolonged), and the letter itself surmounted by a regal crown. The chain was in two rows of gold, linked together by Gothic M's.

We are strongly of opinion that King Garcia planned the discovery of this miraculous lily, and the subsequent institution of the order, to divert the minds of his subjects from the memory of a revolting stain on his character by his conduct in former years towards his mother. His father, Don Garcia the Great, when going on a military expedition, recommended especially to the attention of his Queen, Elvira of Castile, a noble horse of singular value; for in those days the most highly prized possessions of the Spaniards were their arms and their horses. After the departure of the King, Garcia, his eldest son (then Infante, and afterwards Garcia VI.) begged of his mother to give him the valuable animal, a request with which, in her indulgence, she was inclined to comply but for the advice of Don Pedro Sesse, a knight of illustrious birth, who filled the office of master of the horse, who

recalled to her mind the special charge her husband had given her respecting his favourite steed. The young Prince, enraged at his disappointment, and indignant that the representations of Don Pedro should have more weight with the Queen than his own solicitations, determined on a base, malignant, and unnatural revenge. He accused his mother, a lady of known virtue and discretion, of a criminal intrigue with Don Pedro Sesse; and in order to support his allegations, he induced his next brother, Don Ferdinand, to join him in the accusation, persuading him that it was well founded.

He

The King was overwhelmed with surprise and grief when the charge against his wife was conveyed to his ears, and he hastened home to investigate it. On one hand the long-proved excellence of the Queen prompted him to disbelieve it; on the other, he could not suppose that his eldest son, the heir of his crown, would call in question the honour of his own mother without the strongest evidence. interrogated his son Ferdinand, and the evasive answers of that young prince turned the scale of doubt against the unfortunate Elvira. A council of nobles was called to deliberate on the case; and a decree was promulgated, that unless some knight would undertake to maintain the Queen's honour by force of arms in the lists, she should be burned to death at the stake - a cruel fate, but doubly cruel when prepared for her by her own relentless offspring.

King Garcia the Great had, by a Navarrese lady of rank, a natural son, named Don Ramiro, who, compassionating the miserable Queen, and detesting the savage obduracy of her sons, came forward as her champion, and defied the Infante Garcia to mortal combat in her cause. The King was in a state of the most painful perplexity: let the combat unto death between his sons end how it would, his heart would be rent by the loss of whichever fell. In his anguish, he remembered a man of holy office and character (whose name we have not found recorded, but there is reason to believe he was a Clugniac monk), and applied to him for assistance. The pious recluse undertook the task of conferring with the young princes, on whom he urged with moving eloquence the unnatural wickedness of their behaviour to their

mother, arguing, that even were she guilty, it was the part of children only to weep and pray over the frailties of their parents, and to draw an impenetrable veil between them and the eyes of all, save their Creator. He reminded them of their mother's care and love, and at length awakened their dormant filial feelings. Ferdinand relented, Garcia gave way; and throwing themselves at the feet of their father, they confessed their own sin, and declared their mother's innocence.

Don Garcia could scarcely be prevailed on to pardon them; the Queen, however, with genuine maternal tenderness, granted them forgiveness, but required, as the punishment of Garcia's criminal plot, that he should be deprived of part of his inheritance; that Arragon (then attached to Navarre) should be given as a kingdom to Don Ramiro, who had shown for her the affection and loyalty of a true son; and that Ferdinand should succeed to Castille, which otherwise would have fallen to Garcia at his father's death, in right of his mother. As soon as peace was restored to the royal family of Navarre, the young Garcia set out for Rome, to visit the Holy Places, as a pilgrimage after his transgression. During his absence his father died, and he succeeded to his crown, but despoiled of some of its jewels. In after years he sought to hide his shame under the flowers and leaves of the miraculous lily.

Don Ferdinand, surnamed the Just, the Infante of Castile (son of John I. of Castile), raised to the throne of Arragon early in the fifteenth century, to succeed his maternal uncle, Don Martin, founded the Order of the Jar of Lilies, in honour of the Virgin Mary, and in memory of his having, in 1412, taken the city of Antequera, in Andalusia, from the Moors, who lost 15,000 of their best soldiers. The medallion of the Order was charged with a vase or jar of two handles, filled with lilies, and ornamented with griffins. This Vase of Lilies was the armorial ensign of Antequera; and is frequently blazoned in the churches in Spain as the Arms of the Virgin.

Don Ferdinand, the hero of Antequera, and the founder of the Order of the Lily of Arragon, was of a character far superior to that of Don Garcia, institutor of the Order of the Lily of Navarre.