AUTHOR OF "THE HEIRESS OF BRUGES," &c.

Nought is there under Heaven's wide hollownesse
That moves more deare compassion of minde,
Than beautie brought t' unworthy wretchednesse,
Through envie's snares, or fortune's freakes unkinde.
I, whether lately through her brightnesse blynde,
Or through alleageance and faste fealtie,
Which I do owe unto all womankynde,
Feele my hart perst with so greate agonie
When such I see, that all for pitty I could dy.

Faerie Queene.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

LONDON:

HENRY COLBURN AND RICHARD BENTLEY,

NEW BURLINGTON STREET.

1831.

AMBORLIAD

LONDON:

HENRY BAYLIS, JOHNSON'S-COURT, FLEET-STREET.

CALIFORNIA

JACQUELINE OF HOLLAND.

CHAPTER I.

WE must now turn our attention from scenes which have so long occupied it, to others forming a strong contrast with them. We must abandon both the camp and the court for solitude and desolation; political conspiracies for absorbing passion; the wiles of sophistry for tricks of magic; the mainland shores of Holland for the lonely and billow-beaten island of Urk.

But before we altogether transport our readers

to that wild spot, we must go back a little from the regular progress of our story, to trace one anterior passage in the life, and a few variations in the feelings of a personage who, though a while out of sight, has not, we hope, yet escaped the reader's mind-their sometime acquaintance Humphrey, the good Duke of Glocester. We have not now to treat of him in his capacity as the champion of a princess, the rival of a sovereign, or the ruler of a realm; but simply in that character from the pains of which pride, valour, or ambition cannot give impunity-as the slave and victim of that fatal passion which swallows in its vortex all the rest, and which forms the staple not only of romantic fiction but of real life. We have not yet seen Duke Humphrey in the light of a lover. It is as such that we have now to paint him.

Glocester's attachment to Jacqueline was composed, no doubt, of many of the best elements of love, but not of these entirely; for mixed with admiration for her person, and

esteem for her virtues, were views of aggrandisement and distinction, emanating less in devotion to her than in his own ambition. Had no other object crossed his path of high and honourable duty, it had been well, perhaps, for her, and certainly so for him. His attachment might then have been by degrees purified from all its dross, and he might have loved at once with the fervour of passion and the dignity of pride. But his fate was different; and ere long he was doomed to sacrifice all the ennobling qualities of such a state, at the shrine of that infatuation which, in the phraseology of a writer of the century later than his time, is no longer love, but a vehement perturbation of the mind; a monster of nature, wit, and art; a burning disease and raging phrensy; a wandering, extravagant, domineering, boundless, irrefragable, and destructive passion."

The object which had inspired this very combustible combination was a certain damsel called Elinor Cobham, one of the daughters of Regi