The grave faults of her latter days, her vanity, her strong epithets of abuse, her caprice, and her increasing warmth of temper, were probably the results of the personal disappointments of her strange life. And perhaps her dread of death, points us to the real source of these faults, for it seems to indicate that Queen Elizabeth had not been so earnest in seeking God's grace, and the influence of His Holy Spirit, as she ought to have been, to preserve her from evil in this life, as well as to prepare her for the future life where there will be no evil, in the kingdom of the "King of kings and Lord of lords," the happy realm of Jesus. Elizabeth was fourteen when her father died, and then she wrote a celebrated letter in choice Latin to her young half-brother Edward, with whom she was always on excellent terms. The two children were Protestants, Mary alone remaining attached to the Papal power, which Henry VIII. had so unflinchingly put down during the latter part of his reign. Elizabeth's cherished and noble Protestantism remained firm through all the changes of her eventful life; and when, after the reigns of her brother Edward VI., and her elder sister Mary, she herself was placed upon the throne of England, she finally established the Protestant religion in the country; and to her, under God, we owe a deep debt of gratitude, for the long and happy years which have intervened until the present time, and during which God's most Holy Word has been left to us, a free and open book, in which we may each read and learn for ourselves His will, and about that spiritual service which He requires, and which alone can fit us for His presence, when He calls us from His world below to His world above. Queen Elizabeth died on March 24th, 1603, before the morning dawned, after a reign of nearly forty-five years, at the age of sixty-nine. VI. MRS. HEMANS. Let us sketch a scene in the west of our island home. Long, rolling, soft, beautiful blue waves are dashing lightly upon a clear beach of wide sparkling sand, leaving behind, as the tide gradually ebbs, a ribbed and rippled surface. A rather narrow coast-line presents a somewhat scanty amount of cultivation; cottage and mansion lying here and there, as convenience or fancy may have suggested to the possessor. Now and then a tiny clean Welsh village, or small town, claims a space of country which may be rather broader than usual. This coast-line is immediately hemmed in by high, wild, stern mountains sloping quickly upwards towards the sky, with soft grey clouds sometimes poised midway up the steep sides, or resting in filmy folds upon the top. Snowdon, rather to the south of the locality that we are sketching, and a little inland, often raising its high summit above the rest like a silver-haired veteran surrounded by companions, who vie with each other in emulation of their leader.