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 to6 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. and delicate princess, nurtured in the lap of luxury, to encounter its hardships, its horrors, and its fatigues ! So devoted, how- ever, was Eleanor to her fiery lord, so all-absorbing' was the attachment which she bore him, that she expressed her unalter- able determination to accompany him to the East, and to share the dangers which awaited him. In vain did her ladies endeavor to impress her with a sense of the folly and madness of the design. "Nothing," was her reply, "ought to part those whom God has joined; and the way from Syria to Heaven is as near, if not nearer, than from England or from my native Castile." The principal charm, indeed, in the character of Eleanor of Castile, was -that heroic devotion, which, losing sight of all selfish considerations, led her on every occasion to prefer death to absence from the object of her love. Whether the frail bark which contained her warlike lord was being tossed on the mountain wave among the Balearic Isles ;— ^whether he was daring death in the fierce struggles between the Crescent and the Cross, or among the fastnesses of the Welsh mountains ; — whether his toilsome march lay over the sultry and unhealthy plains of Palestine, or whether "Down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side He wound with toilsome march his long array;" in every danger, and in every clime, his gentle consort was cer- tain to be at his side. Wherever glittered the bristling spears of the warrior prince, there was ever to be seen, close by, the silken litter and the sweet smile of Eleanor of Castile. In 1270, Edward set sail from Portsmouth, with the intention of joining his consort at Bourdeaux, whither she had proceeded about a month previously. From Bourdeaux he sailed for Tunis, where, on reaching the camp of Lhe French king, he found Louis already dead from the unwholesomeness of the climate and the fatigues of the enterprise, and his army also greatly thinned by pestilence. Little discouraged, however, by these unlooked-for events, Edward continued his voyage with his consort to the Holy Land, where he greatly signalized himself ; putting the garrison of Nazareth to the sword, routing the Saracens who came to their rescue, again defeating them in a pitched battle at Cohone, in June, 1271, and, by various other acts of valor, reviving the glory of the English name in the East. So great was the terror which his name struck into the Saracens, that they at last came to the determination of em-