tion I do like, and take in good part, for it is simple, and containeth no limitation of place or person. If it had been otherwise, I must have misliked it very much, and thought it in you a very great presumption, being unfit and altogether unmeet to require them that may command." And in conclusion she dismissed the deputation with these words, "I take your coming to me in good part, and give to you my hearty thanks, yet more for your good will and good meaning, than for your message."

These anecdotes will give to the reader a tolerably clear idea of the mind of the young queen. Boldness and determination; conduct, not varnished by any carefulness for nicety of phraseology. She was new to the cares of royalty, but she had read, thought, and suffered, and thus had she acquired power. She had learned the lessons of command in the school of obedience. She was not disposed to lose her individual power in some other, perhaps, not so royal a character. In her disposition and in her appearance, she combined something of her father as well as of her mother. She was tall, fair, neat in her person and in feature, yet of a stately and majestic comportment; yet if not of a sweet temper, by no means morose and sullen; bold, cheerful,

affable, all the requisites that could endear her to the people, especially to those who contemplated her at a distance from the more haughty demeanour of the court. In the following pages we shall see her under various aspects, we are now standing upon the threshold of her reign-that wonderful reign-the true transition reign of England-the Mædevial period of our country. Ah! if our pen could but catch the glow and the fire of the old time! Stately men and stately dames all around us; the land coloured every where with the sombre twilight tints of old romance; cottage and castle yet haunted with the superstitions and shades of ignorance. On the banks of the Thames History performing her deeds in silence, but now, how plainly seen, changing laws, religion, manners; the hum of a rising people in the grey morning of their brave youth, beginning to murmur on the ear; ships sailing along the coast; cities rising in the far-off fields, and all this in no small degree owing to the awe inspired by the name of Elizabeth abroad, and the confidence and love inspired at home.

CHAPTER II.

ENGLAND AND EUROPE IN THE DAYS OF QUEEN BESS.

THE great external fact of the reign of Elizabeth, is the mighty reaction against protestantism, which, mainly from the preaching of Ignatius Loyola, and the practices of his followers, the Jesuits, set in over a considerable portion of Europe; a reaction from which protestantism has never yet recovered itself. This fact, however, became important to England, because it was used by the Catholic Church in its efforts to bring our land back to homage and obedience. The one thing which gives prominency and distinction to the reign of this Queen, is, that she, beyond any sovereign before her, asserted and maintained, throughout her whole reign, the independence of the nation; this gives to her reign that air of imposing dignity: foreign prince, or foreign prelate, both were

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warned not to interfere; Pontiff, Emperor, or King, all were prevented from intermeddling with the domestic affairs of the land. Perhaps this may be mentioned as the great purpose for which the Tudors so long grasped the sceptre of sovereignty; with the exception of Mary, all of them, the miserly Henry VII., and the passionate Henry VIII., all of them maintained the right of England to an independent place in the scale of nations; perhaps the protestantism of Henry VIII., and Elizabeth, did not extend much beyond this point, but it was a most important principle, the sovereignty of the sovereign in temporal matters. In wresting this from the Pope, indeed, they grasped also the spiritual sovereignty; and at present it seems difficult to perceive how the one could have been secured without seizing the other; we may wish that it had been otherwise, but in a period when the sovereign was, next to the Bishop of Rome, the great centralization of power; when the people were not recognized as a fountain of power, it is not, surely, easy to see how the headship of government could be asserted, without also asserting the headship of the church; the authority of the Pope, in the last, had to be struck down, in order that the blow aimed at his authority in the former, might be a suc

cessful one. Elizabeth was compelled, on her accession to the throne, to be decidedly protestant; Paul IV., the reigning Pontiff, was incapable of moderation, and when she signified her accession to him, he returned a repulsive and contemptuous reply to her ambassador. "First of all," said he, "she must submit her claims to the decision of our judgment." But, in the judgment of the Court of Rome, she had no claim to the throne of England; her mother, Anne Boleyn, was never the rightful wife of Henry, in the estimation of the Pontiff and the Vatican. Her faithfulness to Rome was at best but doubtful; it is easy to see, that the submission of her claims to Paul, would have probably been to hand over her crown to Mary, the Dauphiness of France, and subsequently the Queen of Scotland. Elizabeth, however, was not disposed to submit her claims to the adjudication of either Paul or Peter; she reigned by the call of her people to the throne, as well as by their common sense interpretation of her hereditary right, and she determined to defend her throne with true English spirit. England, then, was the asylum of liberty and independence. We read many tales of the tyranny of Elizabeth, and doubtless many are wellfounded, but a monarch fighting the battle of