The esplanade in front commands a fine view. Just below is the military college, formerly the great hospital of Santa Cruz, founded by Cardinal Mendoza. On a height near are the ruins of the castle of Cervantes, not the author Cervantes, but one which belonged to the Knights Templars. We pass through the Puerta del Sol, one of the great Moorish gates, follow the steep and winding way by the remains of an old Roman bridge and fortress, cross the bridge of Alcantara, and so—leave Toledo.
All For The Faith.
There is a mystery, an evangel, in suffering; and this fiery evangel, God's message to our immortality, prepares and perfects the soul for the long hereafter.
In a humble room sat Sir Ralph de Mohun and the Lady Beatrice. The soft sunlight of Provence was fading, and athwart the rose leaves the dying flush rested on this fairest type of girlish loveliness. Absorbed in her rosary, she sat at the open window; while, bending near, Sir Ralph watched the gorgeous heavens, gazing with no thought of the surroundings, and thinking—thinking as we so often do in the hours that fate allows us for decision.
Glimpses of his proud English home stole upon the old man's vision; of the shadowy oak-lined halls and stately corridors where, as a boy, he had looked with childish pride upon portraits of a brave line that had passed their own childhood there; the cross of the old chapel glittered in his dreams, for beneath it the mother of his children slept. But now, homeless and an alien, he would never again see the white cliffs of the land his heart loved best.
The battle of the Boyne had crushed the lingering hopes of the Cavaliers who had forsaken home and kindred to follow the last Stuart king. If James had only possessed average tact, he might have retained the affection of his subjects; but strong-willed without discrimination, zealous without wisdom, his whole reign was a succession of errors which could not but alienate the middle classes, all ways practical and struggling against the encroachments of the aristocracy. Nobly did the Cavaliers rally to the rescue of this last Catholic king, when, forsaken even by those of his blood, he stood alone, held at bay by the same subjects who had sworn him fealty. All through the darkness of his mistaken flight, through the changeful, disastrous campaign, and, so trying to their haughty spirit, even unto the court of Louis, where sneering courtiers dared to greet them with slights and contumely, they neither swerved nor varied. All this had tested their loyalty, tried their faith; yet they neither changed nor forsook him: and of this band none had suffered more than gallant Sir Ralph de Mohun.
A very pleasant life was that of the Catholic gentry in England; they hunted, they were jovial at their meetings, but devout in the chapel; and no class of the English subjects were more orderly and refined. But when the old crown rested on other than the brow of a Stuart, they left the broad moors and sunny downs, and fled with the monarch who represented not only their government, but their faith, in old England.