The reign of Elizabeth lasted forty-four years, four months, and six days. It was distinguished by great actions; it raised the British name to a high and glorious rank in the scale of nations: and we of the present times are indebted to it for some of our greatest advantages. But the sovereign herself closed her long and eventful life in a state of deep melancholy. Her kinsman, Sir Robert Cary, relates, with the quaintness of the time, the circumstances of his visit to her on her death-bed. “She took me by the hand, and wrung it hard, and said that her heart had been sad and heavy for ten or twelve days; and in her discourse she fetched not so few as forty or fifty great sighs. I was grieved at first to see her in this plight; for in all my lifetime I never knew her fetch a sigh, but when the Queen of Scots was beheaded.” She died March 24, 1603, in her seventieth year. Few as are the particulars of her life which we have been able to admit into our narrative, they have perhaps been sufficient to give an outline, however faint, of her character. It has been drawn out in form, and with fairness, by Lord Bolingbroke, in the following passage from his Idea of a Patriot King. “Our Elizabeth was queen in a limited monarchy, and reigned over a people at all times more easily led than driven; and at that time capable of being attached to their prince and their country by a more generous principle than any of those which prevail in our days, by affection. There was a strong prerogative then in being, and the crown was in possession of greater legal power. Popularity was however then, as it is now, and as it must always be in mixed government, the sole foundation of that sufficient authority and influence which other constitutions give the prince gratis and independently of the people, but which a king of this nation must acquire. The wise queen saw it; and she saw too how much popularity depends on those appearances that depend on the decorum, the decency, the grace, and the propriety of behaviour of which we are speaking. A warm concern for the interest and honour of the nation, a tenderness for her people and a confidence in their affections, were appearances that ran through her whole public conduct, and gave life and colour to it. She did great things; and she knew how to set them off according to their true value, by her manner of doing them. In her private behaviour she showed great affability, she descended even to familiarity; but her familiarity was such as could not be imputed to her weakness, and was therefore most justly ascribed to her goodness. Though a woman, she hid all that was womanish about her; and if a few equivocal marks of coquetry appeared on some occasions, they passed like flashes of lightning, vanished as soon as they were discovered, and imprinted no blot on her character. She had private friendships, she had favourites: but she never suffered her friends to