heavy calamities in his early years. He lived to see these calamities
pass away, and, after they were gone, he enjoyed, so far as his own
personal safety and welfare were concerned, a tranquil and prosperous
life. The storm, however, of trial and suffering which enveloped the
evening of his father's days, darkened the morning of his own. The
life of Charles the First was a river rising gently, from quiet springs,
in a scene of verdure and sunshine, and flowing gradually into rugged
and gloomy regions, where at last it falls into a terrific abyss,
enveloped in darkness and storms. That of Charles the Second, on the
other hand, rising in the wild and rugged mountains where the parent
stream was engulfed, commences its course by leaping frightfully from
precipice to precipice, with turbid and foaming waters, but emerges
at last into a smooth and smiling land, and flows through it
prosperously to the sea.

Prince Charles's mother, the wife of Charles the First, was a French
princess. Her name was Henrietta Maria. She was unaccomplished,
beautiful, and very spirited woman. She was a Catholic, and the English
people, who were very decided in their hostility to the Catholic faith,
were extremely jealous of her. They watched all her movements with the
utmost suspicion. They were very unwilling that an heir to the crown
should arise in her family. The animosity which they felt against her
husband the king, which was becoming every day more and more bitter,
seemed to be doubly inveterate and intense toward her. They published
pamphlets, in which they called her a daughter of Heth, a Canaanite,
and an idolatress, and expressed hopes that from such a worse than
pagan stock no progeny should ever spring.

Henrietta was at this time--1630--twenty-one years of age, and had
been married about four years. She had had one son, who had died a few