Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1842 edition. Excerpt: ... ANNE BOLEYN, SECOND QUEEN OF HENRY VIII. CHAPTER J. There is no name in the annals of female royalty over which the enchantments of poetry and romance have cast such bewildering spells as that of Anne Boleyn. Her wit, her beauty, and the striking vicissitudes of her fate, combined with the peculiar mobility of her character, have invested her with an interest not commonly excited by a woman in whom vanity and ambition were the leading traits. Tacitus said of the empress Poppea, "that with her, love was not an affair of the heart, but a matter of diplomacy;" and this observation appears no less applicable to Anne Boleyn, affording withal a convincing reason that she never incurred the crimes for which she was brought to the block. Unfortunately for the cause of truth, the eventful tragedy of her life has been so differently recorded by the chroniclers of the two great contending parties, in whose religious and political struggle she was involved, that it is sometimes difficult to maintain the balance faithfully between the contradictory statements of champion and accuser. Prejudice, on the one hand, has converted her faults into virtues, and on the other, transformed even her charms into deformity, and described her as a monster, both in mind and person. It would be well for the memory of the lovely Boleyn if all the other detractions of her foes could be dis S'oved by evidence as incontrovertible as that which Hans olbein's exquisite portrait of this queen has left in vindication of her beauty. Her character has, for the last three centuries, occupied a doubtful, and, therefore, a debateable point in history; and philosophic readers will do well, in perusing her memorials, to confine their attention to the general facts in which both her...
