We have seen--upon the authority of Lingard, a papal historian--that Elizabeth was, at the beginning of her reign, desirous of holding an equal balance between the rival bodies of Christians. Her mind was not fully made up with regard to her own faith, although it is probable she was inclined to Protestantism. There were reasons for this, some of which may have been controlling with a masculine mind like hers. The relations between her father, Henry VIII, and the papacy must have created impressions not favorable to the pope as a sharer in her governing power over the English people. And the reign of her sister Mary must have tended to strengthen, rather than remove, these impressions. She could not have failed to know that Mary's marriage to Philip II of Spain had brought with it to England a series of calamities, the remembrance of which must have made her not only sorrowful, but indignant. If Mary's natural inclination had been kindly and her heart benevolent, it must have been apparent to Elizabeth that these good qualities had been exchanged for others of the very opposite character, which had incited her to prosecute her Protestant subjects in the spirit of intense religious bigotry, and as if God were acceptably served by shedding blood. And when, upon coming to the throne as the immediate successor of Mary, she found herself confronted by the terrible condition into which England had been thrown--with every evil passion aroused, and little ground for hope of the future--nothing was more natural than the belief that this state of things had been produced, mainly if not entirely, by the unfortunate marriage of Mary with Philip II, who possessed such a combination of bad qualities as left room for scarcely a single good one. Sullen, morose, and selfish, Philip separated himself from everything in life calculated to encourage good or benevolent emotions, and gave free play to that bad ambition which led him to desolate the Netherlands by cruelties as unparalleled as they were atrocious. He had no affection for Mary, being incapable of any such emotion. His marriage with her was a matter of policy alone--one of those political unions which, in the course of time, have produced evils to all the Governments of Europe. He had inherited religious fanaticism from his father, Charles V, but without any of the better qualities of the latter; and gave such excessive indulgence to his hatred of Protestants that nothing rejoiced him so much as to know that the dungeons of the Inquisition were crowded with them, and that none of them escaped the rack, the thumb-screw, and the flames. The best people in England--Roman Catholics as well as Protestants--had feared, when this ill-fated marriage was proposed, that the bloody scenes so often witnessed on the Continent would be repeated there, and for that reason opposed it. But State policy prevailed, and the popular will was of no avail. England, thus united with Spain, became subject to the influence of