"Resume the ancient pledges of your good nature; bind your relations to yourself; give me the satisfaction before I die that, seeing all matters happily settled again between us, my soul, when delivered from this body, may not be constrained to display its lamentations before God for the wrong which you have suffered to be done me here below; but, rather, that being happily united to you, it may quit this captivity to set forward towards him, whom I pray to inspire you happily upon my very just and more than reasonable complaints and grievances. "At Sheffield, this 8th of November, one thousand five hundred and eighty-two. "Your very disconsolate, nearest relation, and affectionate cousin, "MARIE E." But no appeal, however deeply it might possibly touch the heart of the Tudor Queen, could turn her from that one purpose which, in her ever-changing policy, remained forever fixed, of preventing the possibility of Mary’s returning to public life. With all her unwomanly qualities, however, it cannot be presumed that she was always insensible to the pathos of her captive’s language, or even to the better impulses of her own heart. She was not, as certain tyrants seem to have been, cruel from the mere love of inflicting pain. The fierce outbursts of anger and the arbitrary commands with which she overawed Parliament when other means of carrying her point failed, did not prevent her from being sincerely interested in procuring the happiness of her people; and it is not wholly without cause that she has received, from a portion of her subjects, the title of "Good Queen Bess." But woe to him who stood between her and her interest. Her ambition would not be thwarted by any inconvenient delicacy or dictate of conscience. Whether in her more peaceful hours she practised "modest stillness and humility," is irrelevant to the present question; it is beyond doubt however, that when the blast of jealousy, suspicion, or hatred, blew in her ears she knew how to "imitate the action of the tiger." It must in truth be admitted that her position in relation to the Scottish Queen, was a difficult one; but it should, in equal truth, be admitted that her own dishonesty was cause of the most part of her trouble. To have within her realm the one whom a large portion of her subjects considered by right Queen of England, and through whom the Pope and the Catholic powers hoped to see the island restored to the obedience of the Holy See, was eminently calculated to make her life uncomfortable. She was conscious that she was an object of hatred to many who had power to do her no end of mischief. But she must have foreseen these troubles when she elected to detain Mary a prisoner. At any rate she must soon have learned that so long as she chose to be the jailer of the most beautiful, accomplished and renowned woman in Europe, she could not hope for a peaceful career. Who so foolish as to think that Mary would not