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MARTIN HUME.

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MARY TUDOR, QUEEN OF ENGLAND AND SPAIN. After a Painting by Antonio MoreISABEL THE CATHOLIC AT THE SURRENDER OF GRANADA. After a Painting by Pradillato face page 64JOAN THE MAD AND THE BODY OF HER HUSBAND. After a Painting by Pradilla„ „ 176ISABEL OF VALOIS. After a Painting by Pantoja de la Cruz„ „ 288ISABEL OF BOURBON. After a Painting by Velazquez„ „ 336MARIANA OF AUSTRIA. After a Painting by Velazquez„ „ 368ISABEL FARNESE. After a Painting by Van Loo„ „ 536

The above Illustrations are reproduced from Photographs by J. Lacoste, Madrid.

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Proudly reared upon a lofty cliff above the trickling Manzanares, there stood the granite palace that had gradually grown around the ancient Moorish fortress of Madrid. Like an eagle from its aerie, its tiny windows blinked across the tawny plain at the far-off glittering snow peaks of Guadarrama, standing forth clear and sharp against a cobalt sky. The Alcazar had been the scene of many strange happenings in the past; and for a hundred years chivalric splendour had run riot in its broad patios, with their arcades of slender columns, and in its tapestried halls, whose carved ceilings blazed with gold and colour. Frivolous, pleasure-loving, Juan II. of Castile, grandson of John of Gaunt, had through a long reign outdone in vain ostentation the epic poems and romances of chivalry that filled his brain, and he himself, with his attendant Nubian lion slouching by his side, had stalked through the Alcazar upon the cliff, a figure more picturesque than that of Amadis or Arthur. His lavish, easy-going son, Henry IV., had followed in his footsteps, and had made his palace of Madrid a home of dissolute magnificence and humiliating debauchery, unexampled even in that age of general decadence.