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said to have been burried under a heap of stones at the foot of the staircase leading up the White Tower, and as in 1674 the bones of two lads of about 12 and 10 years were dug up there, it seems very probable that the skeletons were indeed those of the two unfortunate nephews of Richard(Pauli, Aufsätze.). This atrocious murder can, of course, not be justified any way, yet it must appear less horrid if we bear in mind that in those lawless times of the civil wars a murder was not considered a great crime, and if we remember that other English kings com- mitted deeds no less horrid without ever having been censured so hard for them. Is it not, for instance, a muyder quite as atrocious if Henry VII., after having been firmly established upon the throne for years, put to death the weak-minded son of Clarence after a captivity of twenty three years, and had executed in her 70th year the daughter of Clarence, the countess of Salisbury merely from fear they could give a pretext for revolt?(Oechelhäuser, Essay).

*As now the sons of Edward sleep in Abraham's bosom“ and*Anne my wife has bid this world good night“ there remains, according to Shakespeare, in the opinion of Richard only one thing to be done to steady his throne, it is to prevent Henry Richmond from marrying his niece Elizabeth by espousing her himself. And so we see him in one of the next scenes trying hard to obtain her mother, Queen Elizabeth's consent. He finds her greatly excited, and in no mood for listening to his wooing. She had just met Queen Margaret, and the Duchess of York, all of whom had broken out into lamentations of their sad fates, and had heaped awful curses upon the head of Richard, whom they had accused to be the only author of all their grieves and miseries. Yet Richard succeeds in making Queen Plizabeth listen calmly to his proposals, and promise at last to plead for him.

The whole scene is not historical, but a fiction of the poet especially what concerns Queen Margaret. She that we see walking about half crazy with grief, and uttering awful curses against all persons that had a share in her misfortune, had been dead for about a year. She had been captured a few days after the battle of Tewkesbury, had been kept a prisoner in the Tower till 1475, when, at her father's request, she had been removed to France. Again, between the murder of the princes, and Queen Anne’s death, and the wooing of Richard there was an interval of about two years. It was on the 1st of March 1484, when Queen Elizabeth, trusting the solemn promises of Richard to treat her and her daughters as members of the royal family, left the Sanctuary of Westminster, and appeared at court. Some time after this event Queen Anne began ailing. Her illness soon began looking serious. The best physicians were consulted, the best remedies employed to stop the disease, but without any avail, the illness was, as the physicians had foretold, ir- remediable. She had never been of robust health, and her death was perhaps much accelerated, ik not caused, by the grief inflicted on her by the sudden death of her only child, the Prince of Wales, for his parents, says Croyland Continuator, were dreadfully shaken, and nearly mad with grief. From the beginning of 1485, she declined rapidly so that the physicians expected her death in the month of March, yet she lingered on till the month of April. As on the day of her death there was an eclypse of the sun, superstitious people saw in it the proof of her death not peing a natural one, and his enemies accused Richard himself of having had a hand in her premature death. But there are no proofs for Richard's guilt. The couple had always lived on good terms, and when Anne was dead Richard's grief was very great, he shed many tears, and made her a gorgeous funeral. His enemies however called this hypocrisy since they believed him to have made away with his wife to marry his niece Elizabeth. They concluded this especially from the circumstance that the

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