That is not a very good lion, but Richard was not a very good king. You would think that this lion has two heads, but that is not so; one is only a shadow. There would be shadows for the rest of him, but there was not light enough to go round, it being a dull day, with only fleeting sun-glimpses now and then. Richard had a humped back and a hard heart, and fell at the battle of Bosworth. I do not know the name of that flower in the pot, but we will use it as Richard’s trade-mark, for it is said that it grows in only one place in the world—Bosworth Field—and tradition says it never grew there until Richard’s royal blood warmed its hidden seed to life and made it grow.
Henry VII.; twenty-four blue squares. (Fig. 23.)
Henry VII. had no liking for wars and turbulence; he preferred peace and quiet and the general prosperity which such conditions create. He liked to sit on that kind of eggs on his own private account as well as the nation’s, and hatch them out and count up the result. When he died he left his heir 2,000,000 pounds, which was a most unusual fortune for a king to possess in those days. Columbus’s great achievement gave him the discovery-fever, and he sent Sebastian Cabot to the New World to search out some foreign territory for England. That is Cabot’s ship up there in the corner. This was the first time that England went far abroad to enlarge her estate—but not the last.
Henry VIII.; thirty-eight red squares. (Fig. 24.)
That is Henry VIII. suppressing a monastery in his arrogant fashion.
Edward VI.; six squares of yellow paper. (Fig. 25.)
He is the last Edward to date. It is indicated by that thing over his head, which is a last—shoemaker’s last.
Mary; five squares of black paper. (Fig. 26.)
The picture represents a burning martyr. He is in back of the smoke. The first three letters of Mary’s name and the first three of the word martyr are the same. Martyrdom was going out in her day and martyrs were becoming scarcer, but she made several. For this reason she is sometimes called Bloody Mary.
This brings us to the reign of Elizabeth, after passing through a period of nearly five hundred years of England’s history—492 to be exact. I think you may now be trusted to go the rest of the way without further lessons in art or inspirations in the matter of ideas. You have the scheme now, and something in the ruler’s name or career will suggest the pictorial symbol. The effort of inventing such things will not only help your memory, but will develop originality in art. See what it has done for me. If you do not find the parlor wall big enough for all of England’s history, continue it into the dining-room and into other rooms. This will make the walls interesting and instructive and really worth something instead of being just flat things to hold the house together.