VI. Elizabeth of England. "O, she has an iron will, An axe-like edge unturnable, our Head, The Princess."-TENNYSON. "Here vanity assumes her pert grimace.”—GOLDSMITH. ELIZABETH of England is a heroine of history, not as a crowned and vain woman, but as one who, in early life, captivated all hearts by her youthful graces and acquirements, sustained many trials with fortitude, and escaped repeated dangers by her precocious sagacity and self-command. To her own wisdom, more than to any other mortal means, she owed her preservation, her popularity and firm establishment on the throne of England. Her subsequent course presents little to be admired. Lord Bacon has been called the "wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind." Elizabeth, in whose reign Bacon flourished, may be called the "wisest, brightest and meanest" of women, if her reputation for extraordinary intellect is to be trusted as readily as the evidences of her odious character. That she was shrewd, learned and energetic, cannot be doubted; but it is hard to decide how far any ruler should be credited with measures, in the suggesting or perfecting of which the wisest counsellors of a nation. always participate. If the truth were fully known, many monarchs and presidents would lose the praise of glorious acts, and, to some degree, the blame of wrongs and follies into which they were entrapped. Elizabeth had the discernment to select able men as her advisers and agents, and the constancy to retain them in office during her long administration. She was fortunate in ascending the throne when the invention of Printing, the discovery of America, and the Reformation, had just aroused human intellect to new life, and produced great men in every department of literature and enterprise. Bacon, Shakspeare, Spenser, Raleigh, Sydney and Drake, and other names of like lustre, made the Elizabethan age glorious, not the selfish woman from whom the period borrows its title. Her favorites, not herself, were the patrons of genius. In her life-time England entered on its present career of national grandeur, and achieved the peaceful and magnificent triumphs of art and commerce; but other motives actuated her than enlarged and generous ones. She established the Reformation and founded the English church; but it was due to her resentment, rather than to any enlightened and free spirit. Like the heroine of a novel, she gave her period a name, and had the most prominent position in its scenes; the subordinate characters were the real heroes. She was an eagle, as one who most visibly hovered over the sunrise of modern intelli |