HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN OF ROUMANIA.

THE name of CARMEN SYLYA almost obscures the title of QUEEN ELIZABETH OF ROUMANIA which gives a grace though it cannot add distinction to the author whose work has invaded many of the fantastic fields of literature.

The noon-day Queen who came into the world when the clocks were striking twelve—the sunshine of life seems to have entered into her soul to illumine the life of those with whom Her Majesty comes into contact either personally or through the medium of her writing, whether in prose or verse.

The sunshine of that soul, while endeavouring to reveal by its own light the beauty of the world around, brings out in strong relief the shadows which make up the gloom and pain of life.

That pain Her Majesty's eyes saw during the Roumanian War of 1877-8, when with her own hands she nursed the wounded in the hospitals and found a solace for her sympathetic suffering in the murmur, as she moved from tortured bed to tortured bed, of the name the soldiers loved best to call her—"the mother of the wounded."

With that deeper and immortal pain Her Majesty's heart was torn when her only child, a beautiful little girl, Death with relentless hands and unheeding eyes tore away only four short years after Life had placed the infant in her mother's arms.

That sorrow drew her closer to the nation, for the duties of her station have ever been her guide. To Roumania the Queen has consecrated the best of herself, and the country will always bless the day when the beautiful Princess Zu Wied met Prince Charles and at the call of love left the life she had planned out for herself to sit by his side on the throne of his Kingdom. There the woman's hand has linked together the destinies of Queen and poet, so that at the bidding of art the Queen has stimulated the old artistic industries of the nation and brought prosperity to the poor. Prosperity in its turn has paid its debt by advancing the culture of the people, and, with the personal aid of the Queen, whose private taste and talent have been brought to a high degree of excellence by a liberal education, has placed the education of women on a higher plane than it has ever been before.

HER MAJESTY ELIZABETH, daughter of the late PRINCE HERMAN VON WIED and the PRINCESS MARIE OF NASSAU, was born December 29th, 1843, and was married November 15th, 1869, to PRINCE CHARLES, son of PRINCE CHARLES ANTOINE OF HOHENZOLLERN.