XXXVI. Nor, passing over many others, and approaching nearer to our own times, should we ever forget Elizabeth of England, in whose composition, the influx of the three Graces concurred equally with that of the three Furies. Her conduct as a sovereign, would ever remain the admiration of Europe, if her vices were not so interwoven with her maxims of government, as to make it impossible to separate them; and her political image, will ever present itself to posterity, coloured, or, to speak more properly, stained and blemished with the blood of the innocent Mary Stewart, queen of Scots. Neither should we forget Catharine of Medicis, queen of France, whose sagacity in negotiating and maintaining a balance between the opposite parties of Calvinists and Catholics, in order to save the crown from a precipice, resembled the dexterity of a rope-dancer, who, mounted on a cord, by his ready art and address at poising himself with the weights at the ends of his poles, secures himself from falling, and delights and amuses the spectators, by displaying the risque, at the same time that he dextrously avoids the danger. Our own queen Isabella, would not have been inferior to any of them in the business of administration and government, if, instead of a queen consort, she had been a queen-regent. Under all this disadvantage, when proper occasions presented themselves, she manifested by her actions, that she was a woman of consummate prudence and ability; and Lawrance Beyerlink in his eulogium of her, says, that no great thing was done in her time, in which she did not assist, or was wholly the author of. _Quid magni in regno, sine illa, imo nisi per illam ferè gestum est?_ At least the discovery of the new world, which was an event the most glorious for Spain that had fallen out in the course of many ages, would certainly never have been effected or accomplished, but for the magnanimity of Isabella, who dispelled the fears, and vanquished the sloth of Ferdinand. XXXVII. In fine, and what seems to have more weight than all the rest, it appears to me, although I am not very certain of the computation, that among the queens who have reigned for any length of time as absolute sovereigns, the greatest part of them, have been celebrated in history for excellent governors. But the poor women, are still so unhappy, as always to have trumped up against this train of illustrious examples, a Brunequilda, a Fredegunda, the two Joans of Naples, and a few others; but, by the way, the two first, although they abounded in mischief, did not want understanding.