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drink wine. The servants wait on their masters bare-headed, and leave their caps on the buffet (sideboard). It is to be noted that in this excellent kingdom there is no kind of good order; the people are reprobates, and thorough enemies to good manners. In the windows of the houses are ́ plenty of flowers, and at the taverns a plenty of rushes on their wooden floors, and many cushions of tapestry, on which travellers seat themselves. The English consume a great quantity of beer; the poor people drink it out of wooden cups. They eat much whiter bread than is commonly made in France. With their beer they have a custom of eating very soft saffron cakes, in which there are likewise raisins. It is likewise to be noted that the servants carry pointed bucklers, even those of bishops. And the husbandmen, when they till the ground, commonly leave their bucklers, swords, or sometimes their bows, in the corner of the field." Our loquacious traveller visited Scotland also, and describes it as a barren and wild country. Some of the Scotch, he says, applied themselves to letters, and became good philosophers and authors: but the people in general were rude and churlish, particularly to strangers; but I suspect our Frenchman experienced the greater incivility, because his countrymen had at that time made themselves very obnoxious to the Scotch.

Richard.

VOL. II.

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How was that? for the French and

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Scotch always seemed to take part with each other against the English.

Mrs. M. The French had presumed too much on all they had done for Scotland; and when the young queen's mother, who was a Frenchwoman, brought a great many of her countrymen into Scotland, and wanted to give them a principal share in the government, you may suppose this could not be very agreeable to the Scots. Amongst other odd instances of interference, these French chose to alter the names of places.

George. That was a pretty piece of impertinence, as if the Scotch names were not good enough for them!

Mrs. M. Edinburgh they pretended to call Lislebourg, and Leith they changed into Petit Lict. They attempted also to change the names of many other places.

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WHEN Mary's death was announced to the parliament, which happened to be assembled at the time, the members all sprang from their seats; and shouts of joy, and the words "God save queen Elizabeth!" were heard to resound on every side. When the news was spread abroad, the transport of the people was so great that they hurried in crowds towards Hatfield, where Elizabeth was then residing, and they escorted her from thence into

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London. Independently of the happiness felt through the country on its deliverance from the late unhappy queen, the accession of Elizabeth gave general satisfaction on account of her great personal popularity, which had been increased during the late reign by the sufferings which had been often brought upon her by her sister's bigotry and malevolence; sufferings by which her life had been often endangered, and from which she had been sometimes rescued by the good offices of Philip, whose occasional interference in the princess's favour was the only way in which he had ever made himself agreeable to the English nation.

Elizabeth was now twenty-five years old. Her character was very far from being a faultless one. Her temper was very impetuous; but there was a spirit and animation about her, with a cheerfulness and gaiety of heart, which made her occasional bursts of passion to be overlooked and forgiven: and even at the time of her first coming to the crown her sense and shrewdness had been sufficiently manifested to make every one augur well of her capacity for government. Her vanity and caprice, which in her later years made her often both vexatious and ridiculous, had not betrayed themselves at that early period. She had a tall commanding person: her forehead was high and open, her nose aquiline, her complexion pale, and her hair inclining to yellow. Her features were good, but the length and narrowness of her face

prevented her from having any just pretensions to beauty.

The new queen, from her first coming to the throne, seemed anxious to show an entire forgetfulness of all her former sufferings, and never testified any resentment towards those who had been instrumental to them. Even sir Henry Benefield, in whose custody she had been for a time, and whom she had found a most severe and churlish gaoler, experienced from her no other punishment or rebuke, but that of her telling him that he should have the custody of any state prisoner whom she wished to be treated with peculiar severity. The cruel Bonner was the only one of her sister's ministers to whom she showed a marked dislike. When he came to make his obedience to her, she turned from him with horror, and would neither speak to him nor look at him.

The first great anxiety of all the Protestant part of the nation was to have a settlement of the affairs of the church. In this important business Elizabeth proceeded with great prudence and caution, and yet with so much determination and steadiness, that she soon replaced every thing in the state it had been in at her brother's death; and all without one drop of blood being spilt, or a single estate confiscated. Bonner alone, for refusing to acknowledge her supremacy, was punished by being imprisoned for life.

Philip, as soon as, he heard of queen Mary's

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