With regard to the queen's person, all contemporary authors agree in ascribing to Mary the utmost beauty of countenance, and elegance of shape, of which the human form is capable. Her hair was black, though, according to the fashion of that age, she frequently borrowed locks, and of different colours. Her eyes were a dark grey; her complexion was exquisitely fine, and her hands and arms remarkably delicate, both as to shape and colour. Her stature was of an height that rose to the majestic. She danced, she walked, and she rode with equal grace. She sung, and played upon the lute with uncommon skill." [69] I will merely give this brief extract as one out of many of great force and beauty, from his _Salmonia_:--"If we look with wonder upon the great remains of human works, such as the columns of Palmyra, broken in the midst of the desert, the temples of Pæstum, beautiful in the decay of twenty centuries, or the mutilated fragments of Greek sculpture in the Acropolis of Athens, or in our own Museum, as proofs of the genius of artists, and power and riches of nations now past away, with how much deeper feeling of admiration must we consider those grand monuments of nature, which mark the revolutions of the globe; continents broken into islands; one land produced, another destroyed; the bottom of the ocean become a fertile soil; whole races of animals extinct; and the bones and exuviæ of one class covered with the remains of another, and upon the graves of past generations--the marble or rocky tomb, as it were, of a former animated world--new generations rising, and order and harmony established, and a system of life and beauty produced, as it were, out of chaos and death; proving the infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, of the GREAT CAUSE OF ALL BEING!" I must trespass on my reader, by again quoting from _Salmonia_:--"I envy no quality of the mind or intellect in others; not genius, power, wit, or fancy; but if I could choose what would be most delightful, and I believe most useful to me, I should prefer _a firm religious belief_ to every other blessing; for it makes life a discipline of goodness--creates new hopes, when all earthly hopes vanish; and throws over the decay, the destruction of existence, the most gorgeous of lights; awakens life even in death, and from corruption and decay calls up beauty and divinity: makes an instrument of torture and of shame the ladder of ascent to Paradise; and, far above all combinations of earthly hopes, calls up the most delightful visions of palms and amaranths, the gardens of the blest, the security of everlasting joys, where the sensualist and the sceptic view only gloom, decay, annihilation, and despair!" [70] In this delightful essay, he says, "the most exquisite delights of sense are pursued, in the contrivance and plantation of gardens, which, with fruits, flowers, shades, fountains, and the music of birds that frequent such happy places, seem to furnish all the pleasures of the several senses."