It is well known to how great an extent Queen Elizabeth, with all her strength of mind, was beset by the weakness of her sex in what concerned her age and her personal appearance. "The majesty and gravity of a sceptre," says one of her contemporaries, "could not alter the nature of a woman in her. When Bishop Rudd was appointed to preach before her, he, wishing in a godly zeal, as well became him, that she should think sometimes of mortality, being then sixty-three years of age--he took his text fit for that purpose out of the Psalms, xc. 12: 'Teach us to _number_ our days, that we may incline our hearts unto wisdom;' which text he handled most learnedly. But when he spoke of some sacred and mystical numbers, as three for the Trinity, three times three for the heavenly hierarchy, seven for the Sabbath, and seven times seven for a jubilee; and lastly, nine times seven for the grand climacterical year (her age), she, perceiving whereto it tended, began to be troubled by it. The Bishop, discovering that all was not well, for the pulpit stood opposite her Majesty, he fell to treat of some more plausible (pleasing) numbers, as of the number 666, making _Latinus_, with which, he said, he could prove Pope to be Antichrist, etc. He still, however, interlarded his sermon with Scripture passages, touching the infirmities of age, as that in Ecclesiastes: 'When the grinders shall be few in number, and they wax dark that look out of the windows,' etc.; 'and the daughters of singing shall be abased;' and more to that purpose. The Queen, as the manner was, opened the window; but she was so far from giving him thanks or good countenance, that she said plainly: 'He might have kept his arithmetic for himself; but I see the greatest clerks are not the wisest men;' and so she went away discontented." AN ARCHBISHOP'S INSTALLATION FEAST.