Misfortune threw the Queen of Scots into the power of Elizabeth, and she was denied those services to which the unfortunate are entitled. Driven beyond endurance, she openly and bitterly defied her more fortunate rival, who viewed her with jealousy as heir to the crown, and was fearful that her beauty and influence might supplant her own popularity. Mary was kept in prison eighteen years and then executed on the scaffold. This transaction will ever remain a foul blot on the character of Elizabeth. [Illustration: Elizabeth defied by Mary Stuart.] Neither the cares of government nor the infirmities of approaching age weaned her from the love of letters, which at every interval of leisure were her great delight. When nearly sixty years of age, in 1592, she made a second visit to Oxford, where, having been entertained with orations, disputations, etc., she pronounced on her departure, a Latin oration to the vice-chancellors and doctors, when she took her last farewell of the university. In the ensuing year she translated from Latin into English, Boethius's "De Consolatione Philosophae." In 1598, when the disturbances in Ireland occupied a considerable share of her attention, she translated Sallust's "De bello Jugurthino," also the greater part of Horace's "De Arte Poetica," and Plutarch's book, "De Curiositate," all of which were written in her own hand. But Elizabeth no longer took an interest in public concerns; her sun was setting, overshadowed by a dark cloud. Prosperity and glory palled upon her sense; an incurable melancholy had fixed itself on her heart. The anxiety of her mind made swift ravages upon her feeble frame; the period of her life visibly approached. The Archbishop of Canterbury advised her to fix her thoughts on God. She did so, she replied, nor did her mind in the least wander from Him. Her voice and her senses soon after failing, she fell into a lethargic slumber, which having continued some hours, she expired gently, without a struggle, March 24, 1603, in the seventieth year of her age and the forty-fifth of her reign. The character of Elizabeth appears to have been exalted by her friends and depreciated by her enemies, in nearly equal proportions. As a monarch, her activity and force of mind, her magnanimity, sagacity, prudence, vigilance, and address, have scarcely been surpassed in royal annals, and are worthy of the highest admiration. Pope Sixtus V. spoke of her on all occasions as "a woman with a strong head," and gave her a place among the three persons who only, in his opinion, deserved to reign; the remaining two were himself and Henry IV. of France. "Your queen," said he once to an Englishman, "is born fortunate; she governs her kingdom with great happiness; she wants only to be married to me to give the world a second Alexander."