have been contented to remain a bachelor, he would, probably, have superseded all the rival candidates for the smiles of his royal mistress.

The first possession acquired by England in the new world, was discovered by sir Walter Raleigh, and in compliment to queen Elizabeth, named Virginia. It was from this coast that he first introduced tobacco into England. It is a well-known tradition, that Raleigh's servant, entering his study with a foaming tankard of ale and nutmeg toast, saw him, for the first time, with a lighted pipe in his mouth, and enveloped in the clouds of smoke he was puffing forth; the simple fellow, imagining his master was the victim of an internal conflagration, flung the contents of the tankard in his face for the purpose of extinguishing the combustion, and then ran down stairs and alarmed the family with dismal outcries, " that his master was on fire, and would be burned to ashes before they could come to his aid."

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Notwithstanding the formidable appearance of England's first smoker, to the eyes of the uninitiated, the practice soon became so general, that it was introduced at court, and even tolerated by queen Elizabeth in her own presence, of which the following anecdote affords amusing evidence. One day she was inquiring very minutely as to the various virtues which Raleigh attributed to his favourite herb, and he assured her "that no one understood them better than himself, for he was so well acquainted with all its qualities, that he could even tell her majesty the specific weight of the smoke of every pipe-full he consumed." The queen, though she was accustomed to take Raleigh for her oracle, thought he was going a little too far, in putting the licence of a traveller on her, and laid a considerable wager with him, that he could not prove his words, not believing it

grand appearance at dinner, in the hall, arranged all matters in her household. Sir Walter's apartment was next to hers, and he became privy to much of her interior management. Early in the morning, he heard her demand of one of her maids, "Are the pigs served?" Just before dinner she entered, with infinite state and dignity, the great chamber, where her guests were assembled; when sir Walter directly asked, "Madam, are the pigs served ?" The lady answered, without abating a particle of her dignity, "You know best whether you have had your breakfast."-Bacon's Apophthegms.

The anonymous author of the life of sir Walter Raleigh, printed in London 1740, affirms that he saw sir Walter's veritable tobacco-box, in the museum of Ralph Thoresby, the historical antiquary, at Leeds.

possible to subject so immaterial a substance as smoke to the laws of the balance. Raleigh, however, demonstrated the fact by weighing, in her presence, the tobacco before he put it into his pipe, and the ashes after he had consumed it, and convinced her majesty that the deficiency proceeded from the evaporation. Elizabeth admitted that this conclusion was sound logic; and when she paid the bet, merrily told him, "That she knew of many persons who had turned their gold into smoke, but he was the first who had turned smoke into gold."

So varied and so brilliant were the talents of Raleigh, as soldier, seaman, statesman, poet, philosopher, and wit, that it would have been wonderful, if a woman so peculiarly susceptible as Elizabeth, had not felt the power of his fascinations. It was to Raleigh's patronage that Spenser was indebted for an introduction to queen Elizabeth, who was so much captivated with his poetic genius, that she, in a moment of generous enthusiasm, promised him a hundred pounds; but when she spoke to my lord-treasurer Burleigh of disbursing that sum, he took the liberty of uttering a cynical exclamation on the prodigality of awarding so large a guerdon for a song! "Give him, then, what is reason," rejoined her majesty. Burleigh, acting in conformity with the hardness of his own nature, gave him nothing. After a pause of fruitless expectation, the disappointed poet addressed the following epigram to the queen: "I was promised on a time

It is said, that by these lines, the bard outwitted the penurious minister, for Elizabeth considering that her queenly honour was touched in the matter, insisted that he should be paid the hundred pounds which she had at first promised. She understood her business, as a sovereign, too well to disgust a man, who possessed the pen of a ready writer; and Spenser, in return, never omitted an opportunity of offering the poetic incense of his gracefully-turned compliments to

Oldys. Tobacco had been long cultivated in Portugal, whence it was introduced into France by Jean Nicot, who sent some seeds to Catherine de Medicis, by whom it was so greatly patronised, that it was at first called," the queen's herb." Smoking soon became so fashionable at the court of France, that not only the gentlemen, but the ladies occasionally indulged themselves with a pipe.

Wenses cat, and goods, and infrädes;
Or.like the times of a te me

In which il cicers of the mainber be:
Or. Ike Air Fluce's grand stiting, zew.
In which all pare perfection ce may see;
En is to thick. by PUTNING
Of earthly things to padre of things Erice!
Her power, ber merer, and her vision, we
Can dem, but who the Godsend en define!
Way then, do I. base shepherd, bold and blind,
Presume the things so sacred to prophane ?
More it it is t'adore, with humble mind

The image of the heavens in shape humane.”

After this hyperbolical strain of adulation, Spenser goes on to explain, that it was "the shepherd of the ocean” who first made him known to the queen, and this is very prettily done, with the exception of the epithet goddess, which, applied to any lady, whether sovereign or beauty, is always in bad taste

"The shepherd of the ocean, quoth he,

Unto that goddess' grace me first enhanced,
And to mine oaten pipe inclined her ear,
That she thenceforth therein 'gan take delight,
And it desired at timely hours to hear.
All were my notes but rude and roughly dight;
For not by measure of her own great mind
And wondrous worth, she met my simple song,
But joy'd that country shepherd aught could find,
Worth hearkening to amongst that learned throng."

It must have been the influence of party spirit alone which could have blinded Mulla's bard to the want of moral justice, displayed by him in endeavouring to distort the character and situation of the persecuted captive, Mary Stuart, into the hideous portrait of Duessa. In this, however, Spenser was probably only performing the task enjoined to him by the leaders of the cabinet, by whom nothing was omitted, that was calculated to poison the minds both of the sovereign and the people of England against the ill-fated heiress of the realm.

The young, graceful, and accomplished Robert Devereux, earl of Essex,' is supposed to have been first introduced to the notice of queen Elizabeth, by his step-father, Leicester, in the hope of diverting her majesty's regard from her

1 He was the son of Walter, earl of Essex, and Lettice Knollys, who was considered the favourite of Elizabeth. She was the daughter of the queen's first cousin, Lettice Lady Knollys, daughter of Mary Boleyn, and sister to Henry Carey, lord Hunsdon. Lettice Knollys was one of the most beautiful girls at the court of Elizabeth, and seems to have inherited not only the charms of person, but the fascination of manners of the queen's mother and aunt, Anne and Mary Boleyn. She married the earl of Essex, and became the mother of a family, beautiful as herself. Unfortunately, she made a conquest of the heart of the earl of Leicester, while yet a wife. The death of her husband, the earl of Essex, in Ireland, 1576, was attributed to poison, administered by the agents of Leicester. Two days before earl Walter died, he wrote to the queen, recommending his infants to her care and patronage. The eldest of these children was Robert, afterwards the noted favourite of Elizabeth: he was then scarcely ten years old. Leicester soon after put away his wife, Douglas lady Sheffield, and married the widow, lady Essex, at first privately, and afterwards in the presence of her stern father, sir Francis Knollys. The young earl of Essex was placed at Trinity College, Cambridge, under the guardianship of lord Burleigh, to whose daughter his father wished to contract him in marriage. Though in possession of considerable landed property, the young earl was either so poor in ready money, or his statesman-guardian so thrifty, that his tutor, Mr. Wroth, had to write for a supply of clothes for him, in 1577, saying, that his pupil was not only "thread-bare, but ragged.' Letters from the young earl to Burleigh, in very elegant Latin, occur, from Cambridge, till the year 1579; and as early as the year 1582, Burleigh found it needful to write his ward a letter on his prodigality. Essex's answer, acknowledging his fault, is dated at York. [See Ellis' Letters.] Soon after, he emerged into Elizabeth's court, where he was as much distinguished by her favour, as by his boundless extravagance. His beautiful sister, Penelope, the wife of lord Rich, became, at the same time, one of the leading intriguantes of that day. Essex involved himself, by reason of his extensive patronage to a vast number of needy military followers, who devoured his substance, and constantly urged him to obtain gifts from the queen. When he was but twenty-four, he was in debt to the enormous amount of 23,000l.; and in his letter, dated 1590, to Elizabeth's vice-chamberlain, (evidently meant for the queen's eye,) he owns the queen "had given him so much, he dared not ask her for more."

new favourite Raleigh, whose influence was regarded with a jealous eye by her ministers. As Essex was the greatgrandson of Anne Boleyn's sister Mary and William Carey, he was nearly related to queen Elizabeth, who distinguished him in the first instance, rather as a youthful pet and kinsman, than a lover. The young earl, however, quickly assumed the haughty and jealous airs of a person, who considered that he had a right to distance all other pretenders to the royal favour. Elizabeth's fickle fancy was just then engaged, more peculiarly, by a gentleman, of whom the busy plotting conspirator Morgan, in one of his secret letters to the captive queen of Scots, speaks as follows, commencing, as the reader will observe, with an allusion to a supposed coolness between her and the late object of her regard, sir Walter Raleigh: "Whether," writes he, "Raleigh, the mignon of her of England, be weary of her or she of him, I hear she hath now entertained one Blount, brother of the lord Mountjoye, being a young gentleman, whose grandmother she may be, for her age and his.”1

This letter, which was written in the year 1585, places to a certainty the introduction of Charles Blount to the court of Elizabeth, at an earlier date than has generally been supposed. The circumstances connected with that introduction are pleasantly related by Sir Robert Naunton.

When queen Elizabeth first saw Charles Blount, at Whitehall, she was struck with his tall graceful stature and agreeable countenance. She was then at dinner, and asked her lady-carver who he was; who, not being able to satisfy her majesty's curiosity, further inquiry was made, and she was informed that he was the younger brother of the lord William Mountjoye, a learned student from Oxford, and had just been admitted to the inner temple. This inquiry, with the eye of her majesty fixed upon him, according to her custom of daunting those she did not know, made the young gentleman blush, which she perceiving, gave him her hand to kiss, encouraging him with gracious words and looks, saying to her lords and ladies in attendance," that she no sooner observed him than she saw that there was noble blood in his veins," adding some expressions of pity for the misfortunes of his house-his father having wasted much in the vain pursuit of the philosopher's stone, and his brother,

1 Inedited State Paper MS.-Mary, Queen of Scots, vol. xv. p. 414.