I think our friend Mr. Froude, whose history we all read, is a little unfair toward Queen Bess, as he was a little over-fair, and white-wash-i-ly disposed in the case of Henry VIII.: both tendencies being attributable to a mania this shrewd historian has--for unripping and oversetting established forms of belief. I think that he not only bears with a greedy zeal upon her too commonly manifest selfishness and heartlessness, but that he enjoys putting little vicious dabs of bad color upon her picture--as when he says, “she spat, and swore like a trooper.” Indeed it would seem that this clever biographer had carried a good deal of his fondness for “vicious dabs” in portraiture into his more recent _post-mortem_ exhibits; as if it were his duty and pleasure to hang out all sorts of soiled linen, in his office of Clean-Scrubber: Yet, I wish to speak with all respect of the distinguished historian--whose vigor is conspicuous--whose industry is remarkable, whose crisp sentences are delightful, but whose accuracy is not of the surest; and whose conscience does, I think, sometimes go lame--under strain of his high, rhetorical canter. The authority for all most damnatory statements with respect to the private life of the Queen, rests upon those Spanish Relations--so minute as to be suspicious--if they were not also so savagely bitter as to twist everything to the discredit of the Protestant Sovereign. Signor Soranzo--the Venetian ambassador (whom Froude does not cite--but who had equal opportunities of observation with the Spanish informer), says of Elizabeth (in a report--not written for publication, but lying for years in the archives of Venice): “Such an air of dignified majesty pervades all her actions that no one can fail to judge her a queen. She is a good Greek and Latin scholar; and beside her native tongue she speaks Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian _benissimo_--and her manners are very modest and affable.”[86]