forget that she was their queen; and when her favourites did, she made them feel that she was so.” Our delineation of Elizabeth has been rather that of a very great personage, than of a good woman; but it must be admitted on all hands, that the poison of calumny has been largely administered, in proportion to the invidiousness of her position. This general lot of greatness fell the heavier on her, in consequence of the severe laws which she was compelled to enact and execute against the papists. The libels against Elizabeth’s good fame were put forth mostly by persons of that proscribed sect, who have represented her, not as indulging the frailties from which her most strenuous advocates cannot exonerate her, but as a monster of cruelty, avarice, and lust. It is but justice to place in contrast with so hateful a picture the noble character ascribed to her even by a Jesuit, in a book published in the Catholic metropolis of France. Père d’Orleans, in his ‘Histoire des Revolutions d’Angleterre,’ speaks thus: “Elizabeth was a person whose name immediately imprints in our minds such a noble idea, that it is impossible well to express it by any description whatsoever. Never did a crowned head better understand the art of government, and commit fewer errors in it, during a long reign. The friends of Charles V. could reckon his faults: Elizabeth’s enemies have been reduced narrowly to search after hers; and they, whose greatest concern it was to cast an odium upon her conduct, have admired her. So that in her was fulfilled this sentence of the Gospel, that the children of this world are often wiser in their views and designs than the children of light. Elizabeth’s aim was to reign, to govern, to be mistress, to keep her people in submission, neither affecting to weaken her subjects, nor to make conquests in foreign countries; but yet not suffering any person to encroach in the least upon the sovereign power, which she knew perfectly well how to maintain, both by policy and by force. For no person in her time had more wit, more skill, more judgment than she had. She was not a warlike princess; but she knew so well how to train up warriors, that England had not for a long time seen a greater number of them, nor more experienced.” [Illustration: [View of the Old Palace, Greenwich.]] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES