independently, and she resolved to keep | is among the truest tests of a character. out of the snare. It is the fashion to The fairest measure of the two Napoleons laugh at this pretended resolution of the is the kind of men they are able to gather Virgin Queen; but I am more ready to round them. A glance at the men will honor the words which a long and glorious tell you, that while the one is the eagle, life-course sustains. Full of a noble truth the other is but the vulture of France. and sincerity are her last words to her last Spenser, Drake, Sidney, Raleigh, WalsParliament. ingham, and Burleigh, made her the queen of their hearts and lives. And their names are among the first in history. In Mr. Wright's Collection of Original Letters of this reign, there is printed the last letter of old Lord Burleigh to his son. The postscript runs thus: "Serve God by serving the Queen, for all other service is indeed a bondage to the devil." This was written after a knowledge of fifty years.

"I do assure you there is no prince that loveth his subjects better, or whose love can countervail our love. There is no jewel, be it never so rich of price, which I prefer before this jewel-I mean your love; for I do more esteem it than any treasure or riches, for that we know how to prize; but love and thanks I count inestimable. And though God hath raised me high, I count this the glory of my crown, that I have reigned with your loves. I have ever used to set the last judgment day before my eyes, and so to rule as I shall be judged to answer before a higher Judge, to whose judgment-seat I do appeal, that never thought was cherished in my heart that tended not to my people's good. To be a king, and wear a crown is more glorious to them that see it than it is a pleasure to them that bear it. For myself, I was never so much enticed with the glorious name of a king, or royal authority of a queen, as delighted that God hath made me his instrument to maintain his truth and glory; and to defend this kingdom from peril, dishonor, tyranny, and oppression. There will never queen sit in my seat with more zeal to my country, care to my subjects, and that will sooner, with willingness yield and venture her life for your good and safety than myself. Shall I ascribe any thing to myself, and my sexly weakness? I were not worthy to live then, and of all most unworthy of the mercies I have had from God, who hath ever yet given me a heart which never yet feared foreign or home enemies. I speak it to give God the praise, as a testimony before you, and not to attribute any thing to myself. For I, O Lord! what am I, whom practices and perils past should not fear! Oh! what can I do, (these she spake with great emphasis,) that I should speak for any glory?-God forbid !"

But then this woman, for woman she was-as Cecil said, "sometimes more than man, sometimes less than woman"this woman, we are told in select societies, was capricious, close, and full of petty jealousies and coquetries. Of course, we, who are so nobly free from them; who never are of two minds the same day about any thing; who are open of heart and lavish of hand always; who are perfectly simple and transparent in our manners, and never whisper an affected" Nay" when a passionate "Yea" is in our hearts

of course we, by our simplicity, purity, consistency, and dignity, have earned the right to cast stones at this lion-hearted woman, who for forty years fought a deadly battle against the Papal tyrant and all Europe to back him, and brought her kingdom with glory through it all. I have read a good deal about these vanities, follies, jealousies, flirtations, tyrannies, and vacillations, but I find not my dearest friends so free from them as to lead me to expect exemption in her; but these are no more than the ripples on that deep stream of moral and intellectual power, which bore our country into that flood-tide of fortune which has floated her on into the van of the world.

Of Mary Stuart I have not much to say; but something must be said, as her sad, dark history is inwoven with that of the confederation of the continental powers. Her execution is generally regarded To me these words ring true. I think, as the great blot on Elizabeth's character too, of the mighty men she gathered and reign. All students of history have around her, and who accorded to her a now given up the romantic view of Mary reverence, and served her with a fidelity Stuart's fate. Of course, it is painful to -nay, a passionate devotion-hardly to dry up the fountain of those pathetic be matched in history. Believe that this tears with which nascent orators

are

the Roman Church. It settled that there could be no peace between the lovers of God's truth and Antichrist, and that one or the other must be put down-which was settled in that great sea-fight to whose special history we now proceed.

From what has been already advanced, it will abundantly appear that there was no want of will on the part of the Catholic

England. It was simply a question of power. That power has never existed in such fullness as in Elizabeth's reign. The two factors of that special power were the weakness of the French Monarchy and the splendid prosperity of Spain. Under the sons of Catharine de Medici, France bled inwardly to a fearful extent. The great religious questions lacerated her very vitals. The bloody day of St. Bartholomew in 1572, settled them in a measure. France then sealed her adhesion to Rome by the blood of her noblest citizens; and until the death of Henry III. in 1589, her condition was simply one of political paralysis. It is well worth our while to remark, in passing, how thoroughly the colonizing power of France seems to have expired with her Protestantism. In the sixteenth century, she seemed well nigh able to compete with England; since St. Bartholomew's Day the power has been dead.

in that age, had you heard your queen bastardized in the face of Europe, had you seen the crown of your country bestowed by a foreign priest on a man who had sacrified one hundred and fifty thousand brave Hollanders to his lust for empire and orthodoxy, had you seen the Smithfield fires, had you heard the tocsin of St. Bartholomew's Eve, had you listened to the tales of the bloody doings of the In-States to strike a decisive blow against quisition in Spain and in the Indies, which were spread about that time through England, making men's hearts to shudder and their flesh to creep, perhaps you would have thought so too. I yield to few Romanists even in the recognition of the Roman Church, as in the early ages the guide and instructress of Europe. Gregory the Great, at the close of the sixth century, did most Christian service to mankind. In his correspondence you will meet with a gentleness, a wisdom, a freedom from bigotry, an indifference to forms, a love to souls, and a zeal for Christ, which will surprise those who know Romanism only through its modern manifestations. It would be tolerably near the truth to say that up to the dissolution of the Carolingian empire, the Roman Church, though full of errors and carnal policies, was, on the whole, the nurse of Christendom; from that time till the end of the eleventh century the worldly element predominated, and the Roman Church ruled Christendom as lord, while from the reign of Hildebrand to our own time, the worldly element has become absolute; and the Papacy has been Christendom's tyrant and plague. The policy of the Roman Church with regard to that desire and cry for Reformation which, very early in the fifteenth century, made itself plainly heard, sealed her doom. From that time, the recording angel seems to have written of her: "Light came into the world, but she loved darkness rather than light, because her deeds were evil." The Council of Constance in 1414, began that deliberate stifling of the ery for Reformation, which the Council of Trent in the middle of the next century completed. The light was shown to Rome, and she hated and shunned it. Thenceforth, she became the great enemy of Christ's Gospel, the sworn foe of all sacred human rights and liberties, and the Gospel passed over to the Protestant side. The Council of Trent settled the Roman Church, and other things besides

This utter prostration of France left Philip, untroubled by any fears or jealousies, to concentrate all his power on the great enterprise of his reign. Happily, Philip's empire, splendid as it was, was not altogether a unity. In 1572, the Netherlands, sick of his jealous tyranny, revolted; and a long and bloody struggle was carried on under Alva, Don John of Austria, and Alexander Farnese, the Duke of Parma, for the mastery of the country. In 1579, the union of the seven provinces was formed at Utrecht, under William of Orange. In 1584, he was foully mur dered; and the desperate Hollanders are said to have offered Elizabeth the crown. She had the wisdom to refuse it; but she seems to have felt at that time that the dread struggle with Spain was inevitable; and she judiciously helped the States both with money and with men. Though Farnese was at the head of a powerful force, and was nominally master of the Netherlands, yet this struggle seriously impaired the unity and strength of the Spanish empire. Philip from that time seems to

bave meditated the decisive blow. He the right of the poor." If such gold is caused immense preparations to be made tempting you, fly it as you would a pestiin every province of his empire; and hav-lence; and see to it that you have the ing, in 1580, possessed himself of the Por- blessing of the poor and of him that is tuguese crown, and having all the har ready to perish, on your store. bors of Portugal therefore under his control, he gathered gradually the elements of a great armada in his ports. This acquisition of the Portuguese navy was a matter of supreme importance to his designs. The Spaniards and Portuguese divided between them the naval mastery of the world. The two fleets checked and balanced each other. Their concentration in one navy left the Spaniard the undisputed, he would have it, the undisputable master of the seas. The wealth of the Indies, East and West-for both were united in his empire who wore the crowns of Portugal and Spain-furnished the ample means. But that gold had a curse on it. It was cursed as gold was never cursed before, and can never, let us hope, be cursed again. Wrongs, crimes, and miseries, such as were never known until the Christian priest tried his hand at torture and lust, made that gold a very doom | to all who handled it, and sealed the fate of the Armada before it left the ports of Spain. And there is plenty of cursed gold about the world now. Gold that seems fated to make discord and misery in every family which it enters; for "God will maintain," ay, even to the third or fourth generation, "the cause of the afflicted and

Philip masked his preparations by announcing that the fleet was intended for the Indies. But none of Elizabeth's statesmen had a doubt about its true destination. The possession of the Flemish harbors gave Philip an immense advantage; while the flower of the Spanish infantry, the finest in Europe, was already gathered there ready for a descent on our shores. The Spanish navy was then, as we have said, undisputed master of the broad ocean. On the narrow seas, the daring and skillful seamanship of the English gave them the clear advantage; but on the broad seas the mistress of America and India was queen. The English navy was too small to undertake great enterprises, and the isolated victories of English commanders, though they galled the Spaniards most severely, were held to prove nothing in Spain. But the great trial was at hand. The queen of the narrow seas was about to challenge the empire of the broad ocean, and to win, by one grand stroke the naval supremacy of the world. What manner of men they were who should win it, and how they sped, we shall endeavor in the next number to show.

POPULATION OF CHINA.-Some years ago Sir John Bowring was requested by the registrar general to furnish such information as would give an approximate notion of the population of China. He then entered into certain investigations, which at that time led him to the conclusion that the population of China was between 350,000,000 and 360,000,000. Later returns had induced him to believe that at the present moment it was not less than 412,000,000. One evidence of the heavy pressure of population on the means of subsistence was afforded by the very extensive emigration which took place to every quarter which afforded a feasible opening of other fields of labor in the East. Another evidence was the very small value set upon life-so little, in fact, that there was no difficulty in finding substitutes for execution at the rate of 100 taels per life. Another evidence was to be found in the manner in which a large population swarmed on all the large internal rivers, who bred, and lived, and died in boats, and never set foot on land.

RUMORED ROYAL MARRIAGES.-It is rumored in the Court circles at Berlin that a double matrimonial alliance is about to take place between the princely house of Hohenzollern and the royal house of Portugal. The current report is that the hereditary prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, now aged twenty-five, is to be married to the younger sister of the King of Portugal, Donna Antonia, born in 1845, and that the King of Portugal will marry the younger daughter of the Prince of Hohenzollern, the Princess Marie, also born in 1845. It will be remembered that his Majesty was previously married to the sister of this Princess, the Princess Stephanie, who died last year.

THERE is a lawyer in Plymouth so excessively honest that he puts all his flower-pots out over nights, so determined is he that every thing shall

have its dew.

SOME BODY says that the best way to keep food upon a weak stomach, is to bolt it down,

From the Dublin University Magazine.

VONVED THE DANE-COUNT OF ELSINORE.