tude in some practical and enduring fashion; and he suggested that, as John might soon experience greater troubles and annoyances for the sake of the Electress than he had done before, since it was to be feared that the emperor would take necessary steps to compel him to surrender her,he should in time remove her to a place of more security and secrecy, which she herself would indicate. In reply, the Saxon Elector tranquilised the king by repeated assurances that he would never surrender Elizabeth, and that he might safely rest upon his previous promise. The emperor's summons to her to return home she rejected with the same dignity and firmness which she had ever manifested; and Charles took no farther step in the matter. About this time she appears to have cherished some hope that the emperor's sister Mary, late Queen of Hungary, who had recently succeeded Margaret in the government of the Netherlands, would extend to her protection. It might be anticipated that, as a woman, Mary would sympathise with a princess like Elizabeth, so severely tried in the school of misfortune, if only religious bigotry, which had been the case with her predecessor Margaret, did not shut out compassion. Rumour affirmed that the new vicegerent of the Netherlands inclined to Protestantism, which she had favoured while she was queen of Hungary; and Luther, crediting the report, had dedicated to her several psalms. But the very suspicion entertained regarding her by her brothers Charles and Ferdinand, that she was infected with the "Lutheran heresy," caused her either to guard against shewing any favour for the Electress, or when she did so, to do it in such lukewarm fashion, that Elizabeth therefrom reaped no real benefit. On the other hand, the latter was somewhat cheered with the thought that perhaps King Christian might be at last successful in regaining his lost kingdom. While he was busily engaged in the preparations for his expedition, she wrote to him expressing hopes of its prosperous issue, on the 8th August 1531, yet even then, amid all her expectations of a brighter future for her muchloved brother, she could not repress the feeling of her own great distress. She concludes her letter with the following words: "I implore you to think of your poor, sorrowing, forsaken sister, and try to help me out of the great wretchedness and misery, which beyond measure I endure." In another letter, written the same day, she says, thereby clearly shewing that while the Elector permitted her to remain in safety within his dominions, she received but little to support existence,-"God is my witness that I have not a single groschen in my hand, except I borrow it.'

She intercedes for her Brother.

675

In truth, she was now in circumstances of the utmost penury, and saw no way of extrication from her financial embarrassments.

Ere long fresh griefs assailed her. She learned, with profound sorrow, that her brother's expedition had totally failed, and that he himself had been imprisoned, in spite of the safe-conduct granted to him, by his uncle, Frederick the First, his successor on the Danish throne. Rumour, with usual exaggeration, added that the royal captive was treated with peculiar severity, and that he was immured in a dismal dungeon in the castle of Sönderborg, with only a wretched dwarf as his attendant and companion. Elizabeth could not rest after she received this painful intelligence. She wrote immediately to King Frederick, and represented, in impressive terms, the injustice of treating her brother like a prisoner a plain breach of the safe-conduct which guaranteed to him full personal freedom; she complained of the cruelty which, according to common report, was shewn to Christian; and she finally implored Frederick to treat him as a king, and his own near relative, reserving the points at issue between them for the arbitration and decision of the Emperor and the German princes. The same day she also wrote to the Elector John Frederick of Saxony, who had lately succeeded his father in the government, and supplicated him to use his influence in behalf of her unfortunate brother. Moved by her appeals, John Frederick at once despatched a letter to the king of Denmark, in which he told him that as Christian, confiding to the safe-conduct, had consented to stop hostilities, the principles of justice craved that he should not be treated like a captive, but that all disputed matters should be laid before certain sovereigns, who were friends of both, and who might be able to arrange a compromise agreeable to either party. The Elector did more than this. He also wrote to the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, who was the head of the German Protestants, and held in much repute by King Frederick the First. He earnestly requested Philip to support his mediation for the imprisoned monarch; he reminded him that even though he cared not about Christian himself, he should still recollect Christian's sister, the pious and God-fearing Elizabeth, who was so unfortunate and forsaken by the world. Political considerations were, however, in the present case, the only ones that influenced the mind of Philip. To the mishaps of Christian he remained indifferent, because, so far as Germany was concerned, that dethroned prince could not benefit the Protestant cause; while, on the other hand, the Landgrave, during a course of years, had been closely allied with

Frederick, and the latter was now able to render important aid to Protestantism. Philip therefore declined the Elector's request-all the more readily because Frederick the First, with his usual forethought, had written, as soon as he became aware of the excitement which Christian's imprisonment produced in Germany, to Philip and various other German princes, urging upon them the propriety of taking no step for the benefit of the captive, but rather expressing their approval of the treatment he had received. The Elector Joachim of Brandenburg, who was one of those princes, could not certainly be expected to espouse the cause of his hated brother-in-law. He signified his joy at Frederick's triumph over their common adversary, and approved of Christian's imprisonment although at the same time he advised the victor to deal with his foe as beseemed a fallen monarch and his own near relative. Duke Albert of Prussia, who was married to Frederick's daughter, could not well dispute the validity of his father-in-law's procedure. Thus the Saxon Elector stood alone, and King Frederick had little scruple in rejecting his proffered mediation, assigning as his reason for doing so that the imprisonment or release of Christian was something which did not solely depend upon himself, but also upon the king of Sweden, the Hanseatic League, and the nobles of Denmark, Holstein, and Schleswig. Still, Elizabeth derived a solitary comfort from these negotiations. King Frederick solemnly declared to the Saxon Elector that the reports which were circulated regarding the cruel treatment of Christian in his bondage rested on no foundation, and that he received every indulgence compatible with his safe retention in custody. With such an assurance, Elizabeth was obliged to remain meanwhile satisfied; but, to the end of her days, she continued to interest herself unweariedly in behalf of her brother, and to work, albeit without success, for his liberation from imprisonment.*

The remainder of Elizabeth's existence was an unbroken monotony of sorrow. That sorrow she bore with all the heroic Christian fortitude which had signalised her earlier career. The bodily ailments to which she had been long a victim greatly increased and multiplied. She became nearly blind, and was many years so lame, that she had to be carried about from one place to another. She laboured, besides, under the constant pressure of the deepest poverty; for her now ungrateful sons, Joachim and John, left her destitute of the common necessaries of life; while the former

* Christian's long captivity was terminated by his death at Kallundborg Castle (to which place he had been removed from Sönderborg) in 1559, four years after the decease of his greatly-loving and greatly-suffering sister.

Her Death.

677

of the two grieved and scandalised her by a course of conduct in his domestic relations similar to that which had poisoned the well-spring of her own wedded happiness. Most painfully vivid is the picture which she herself presents of her circumstances in the following letter, written in her last years to Albert, Duke of Prussia:*-"I doubt not you have heard that I have been struck with palsy, and if I live until next Easter, I shall have completed eight years thus prostrate day and night, unable to move from spot to spot, except when others carried me. In addition, during all that time I have suffered from cramp, gout, and rheumatism, so that my anguish is indescribable. Those who are round me say that they never witnessed such a malady. Daily I can perceive that I have only short time to live, but I surrender my body and my soul into God's gracious keeping. Now, at next Michaelmas, my first quarter's money becomes. due, with which I should buy the things necessary for my household; but the money is owing by me already, and I shall not touch a farthing. I know not what to do. I have a house to live in, and that is all. Until Easter, I shall not possess as much as will even purchase me a single egg, and must therefore, along with my servants, die of hunger, if God does not help me. This I desire to let you know; and I can add, with truth, that for two years running my condition has been such that I have been almost famished. Those who are with me know it, and they will be my witnesses. So I pray you humbly, for the sake of the Lord and His blessed word, that you cast the eye of your compassion upon me, wretched widow that I am, and, according to your pleasure, aid me in my extreme need, receiving for the same your reward from Christ, our dear Saviour. Herewith I humbly crave a kind answer to this letter, and implore you also to retain it in your own possession."

Death at last released her from her sufferings on the 11th June 1555, in the seventieth year of her age.

Thus dark and melancholy was the life of the luckless Danish princess. No one will withhold compassion from a fate which was as hard as it was unmerited, and fulfilled so little the expectations cherished of her future, when, the only daughter of a powerful sovereign, she spent her joyous girlhood in Copenhagen palace. It is the old sad story,the story perpetually and painfully repeated:

From their spheres

The stars of human glory are cast down;
Perish the roses and the flowers of kings;

* Schmidt's "Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft," vol. ii. p. 256 The letter is undated, but evidently belongs to the concluding period of her life.

So fades, so languishes, grows dim, and dies,
All that this world is proud of."

In the great picture-gallery of world-history and churchhistory, there are few figures which possess more touching significance than that of the royal Reformation lady, a monarch's child and a prince's spouse-true sister, true wife, true Christian-the sorely-tried, but long-enduring, Elizabeth of Brandenburg.

J. J.

ART. II.— Greek and Latin Hymnology.'

J. RAMBACH: Anthologie christl. Gesänge aus allen Jahrh. der christl. Kirche. Altona, 1817-33. H. A. DANIEL: Thesaurus hymnologicus. Hal. 1841-56, 5 vols. EDELESTAND DU MERIL: Poésies populaires Latines antérieures au douzième siècle. Paris, 1843. C. FORTLAGE: Gesänge der christl. Vorzeit. Berlin, 1844. G A. KÖNIGSFELD U. A. W. V. SCHLEGEL: Altchristliche Hymnen u. Gesänge lateinisch u. deutsch. Bonn, 1847. Second collection by KÖNIGSFELD, Bonn, 1865. E. E. Kocп: Geschichte des Kirchenlieds u. Kirchengesangs der christl., insbesondere der deutschen evangel. Kirche. 2d ed. Stuttgart, 1852, f. 4 vols. (vol. i. pp. 10-30). FR. Jos. MONE: Hymni Latini Medii Ævi. 3 vols. (from MSS.) 1853-55. FEL. CLEMENT: Carmina e poetis Christianis excerpta. Par. 1854. BASSLER: Auswahl altchristlicher Lieder vom 2-15ten Jahrh. Berlin, 1858. R. CH. TRENCH: Sacred Latin Poetry, chiefly lyrical, selected and arranged for use; with Notes and Introduction (1849), 2d ed. improved, Lond and Cambr. 1864. The valuable hymnological works of Dr J. M. NEALE (of Sackville College, Oxford): The Ecclesiastical Latin Poetry of the Middle Ages (in Henry Thompson's History of Roman Litera ture, Lond. and Glasgow, 1852, p. 213 ff.); Medieval Hymns and Sequences, Lond., 1851; Sequentiæ ex Missalibus, 1852; Hymns of the Eastern Church, 1862; several articles in the Ecclesiologist; and a Latin dissertation, De Sequentiis, in the Essays on Liturgiology, &c., p. 359 sqq. (Comp. also J. CHANDLER: The Hymns of the Primitive Church, now first collected, translated, and arranged, Lond. 1837.)

POETRY, and its twin sister music, are the most sublime

and spiritual arts, and are much more akin to the genius of Christianity, and minister far more copiously to the purposes of devotion and edification than architecture, painting, and sculpture. They employ word and tone, and can speak thereby more directly to the spirit than the plastic arts by stone and colour, and give more adequate expression to the

The following paper, from our esteemed Contributor the Rev. Dr Schaff, New York, forms part of a large work on which he is now engaged.-Ed. B. & F. E. Review.