THE GOLDEN DAYS OF GOOD QUEEN BESS. CHAPTER I. TRIUMPHANT MOMENTS. THERE has been, we believe, but one instance of the unaffected and loud demonstration of joy and merriment upon the occasion of the death of a sovereign, but when Queen Mary died, the joy and rapture of the Londoners knew no bounds. The streets of London, at that time, probably presented a very similar appearance to those of Paris in our own day. Before the doors stood trees, beneath which the people were in the habit of sitting and indulging in their mirth and festivity. Although then the 17th of November was a winterly day, it was regarded as a bright, shining summer B day by the London citizens. The bells of the churches were set a-ringing, as for a great prince who had achieved a victory, rather than for a queen, who had been summoned by the finger of Death. Tables were spread in the streets; the foaming ale-can passed from hand to hand; large bonfires were kindled at night; the whole city was given up to the most evident indications of joy; a load had been lifted from the heart of the nation; the bustling citizens, as they passed to and fro, smiled cheerily upon one another, and few were the families where something more substantial than a smile did not show the hearty gladness of the universal mind. On the following Sunday the Te •Deum was chaunted in the churches. All this was unexampled, but it was a well merited expression of the opinion of the nation of its departed cruel sovereign, and that sovereign a woman. Meantime, the future sovereign lady of the realm, Elizabeth, who had for some time been confined a prisoner at Hatfield, then a beautiful mansion, received the news of her sister's death and of her own exaltation, so far as we can learn, in a very becoming manner. She did not affect any great sorrow for the death of her sister. How could she do so? She certainly |