Mary had the misfortune to labour under a chronic infirmity, which confined her for weeks, and indeed months, of every year to her chamber, and which, with her domestic troubles, gave her an air of melancholy, that in later years settled into a repulsive austerity. The tones of her voice were masculine, says the Venetian, and her eyes inspired a feeling, not merely of reverence, but of fear, wherever she turned them. Her spirit he adds, was lofty and magnanimous, never discomposed by danger, showing in all things a blood truly royal.[56] Her piety, he continues, and her patience under affliction, cannot be too greatly admired. Sustained, as she was, by a lively faith and conscious innocence, he compares her to a light which the fierce winds have no power to extinguish, but which still shines on with increasing lustre.[57] She waited her time, and was plainly reserved by Providence for a great destiny.--We are reading the language of the loyal Catholic, grateful for the services which Mary had rendered to the faith. Yet it would be uncharitable not to believe that Mary was devout, and most earnest in her devotion. The daughter of Katharine of Aragon, the granddaughter of Isabella of Castile, could hardly have been otherwise. The women of that royal line were uniformly conspicuous for their piety, though this was too often tinctured with bigotry. In Mary, bigotry degenerated into fanaticism, and fanaticism into the spirit of persecution. The worst evils are probably those that have flowed from fanaticism. Yet the amount of the mischief does not necessarily furnish us with the measure of guilt in the author of it. The introduction of the Inquisition into Spain must be mainly charged on Isabella. Yet the student of her reign will not refuse to this great queen the praise of tenderness of conscience and a sincere desire to do the right. Unhappily, the faith in which she, as well as her royal granddaughter, was nurtured, taught her to place her conscience in the keeping of ministers less scrupulous than herself; and on those ministers may fairly rest much of the responsibility of measures on which they only were deemed competent to determine. Mary's sincerity in her religious professions was placed beyond a doubt by the readiness with which she submitted to the sacrifice of her personal interests whenever the interests of religion seemed to demand it. She burned her translation of a portion of Erasmus, prepared with great labor, at the suggestion of her confessor. An author will readily estimate the value of such a sacrifice. One more important, and intelligible to all, was the resolute manner in which she persisted in restoring the Church property which had been confiscated to the use of the crown. "The crown is too much impoverished to admit of it," remonstrated her ministers. "I would rather lose ten crowns," replied the high-minded queen, "than place my soul in peril."[58]