After Edward came Queen Mary, in 1553--the bloody Mary, who violently overturned the Protestant system, and avenged her mother against her father by restoring the Papal sway and making heresy the unpardonable sin. It may seem strange, in one breath to denounce Henry and to defend his daughter Mary; but severe justice, untempered with sympathy, has been meted out to her. We acknowledge all her recorded actions, but let it be remembered that she was the child of a basely repudiated mother, Catherine of Arragon, who, as the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, was a Catholic of the Catholics. Mary had been declared illegitimate; she was laboring under an incurable disease, affecting her mind as well as her body; she was the wife of Philip II. of Spain, a monster of iniquity, whose sole virtue--if we may so speak--was his devotion to his Church. She inherited her bigotry from her mother, and strengthened it by her marriage; and she thought that in persecuting heretics she was doing God service, which would only be a perfect service when she should have burned out the bay-tree growth of heresy and restored the ancient faith. Such were her character and condition as displayed to the English world; but we know, in addition, that she bore her sufferings with great fortitude; that, an unloved wife, she was a pattern of conjugal affection and fidelity; that she was a dupe in the hands of designing men and a fierce propaganda; and we may infer that, under different circumstances and with better guidance, the real elements of her character would have made her a good monarch and presented a far more pleasing historical portrait. Justice demands that we should say thus much, for even with these qualifications, the picture of her reign is very dark and painful. After a sad and bloody rule of five years--a reign of worse than Roman proscription, or later French terrors--she died without leaving a child. There was but one voice as to her successor. Delirious shouts of joy were heard throughout the land: "God save Queen Elizabeth!" "No more burnings at Smithfield, nor beheadings on Tower green! No more of Spanish Philip and his pernicious bigots! Toleration, freedom, light!" The people of England were ready for a golden age, and the golden age had come. ELIZABETH.--And who was Elizabeth? The daughter of the dishonored Anne Boleyn, who had been declared illegitimate, and set out of the succession; who had been kept in ward; often and long in peril of her life; destined, in all human foresight, to a life of sorrow, humiliation, and obscurity; her head had been long lying "'twixt axe and crown," with more probability of the former than the latter. Wonderful was the change. With her began a reign the like of which the world had never seen; a great and brilliant crisis in English history, in which the old order passed away and the new was inaugurated. It was like a new historic fulfilment of the prophecy of Virgil: