of literature was much more ample than that of most females of the age. Like her sister Mary she possessed a knowledge of five languages; but Mary did not venture to converse in Italian, neither could she construe the Greek testament, like Elizabeth. The queen is said to have excelled on the virginals, and to have understood the most difficult music. But dancing was her principal delight; and in that exercise she dis- · played a grace and spirit which was universally admired. She retained her partiality for it to the last. Few days passed in which the young nobility of the court were not called to dance before their sovereign; and the queen herself condescended to perform her part in a galliard with the duke of Nevers, at the age of sixtynine.

Of her vanity the reader will have noticed several instances in the preceding pages: there remains one of a more extraordinary description. It is seldom that females have the boldness to become the heralds of their own charms; but Elizabeth, by proclamation, announced to her people, that none of the portraits, which had hitherto been taken of her person, did justice to the original: that at the request of her council she had resolved to procure an exact likeness from the pencil of some able artist; that it should soon be published for the gratification of her loving subjects: and that on this account she strictly forbade all persons whomsoever to paint or engrave any new portraits of her features without licence, or to show or publish any of the old

portraits, till they had been reformed according to the copy to be set forth by authority.

The courtiers soon discovered how greedy their sovereign was of flattery. If they sought to please, they were careful to admire; and adulation the most fulsome and extravagant was accepted by the queen with gratitude, and rewarded with bounty. Neither was her appetite for praise cloyed, it seemed rather to become more craving by enjoyment. After she had passed her grand climacteric she exacted the same homage to her faded charms as had been paid to her youth; and all who addressed her were still careful to express their admiration of her beauty in the language of oriental hyperbole.

But however highly the queen might think of her person she did not despise the aid of external ornament. At her death two, some say three, thousand dresses were found in her wardrobe, with a numerous collection of jewellery, for the most part presents, which she had received from petitioners, from her courtiers on her saint's day, at the beginning of each year, and from the noblemen and gentlemen whose houses she had honoured with her presence. To the austere notions of the bishop of London, this love of finery appeared unbecoming her age; and in his sermon he endeavoured to raise her thoughts from the ornaments of dress to the riches of heaven; but she told her ladies that, if he touched upon that subject again, she would fit him for heaven. He should walk there without a staff, and leave his mantle behind him.

In her temper Elizabeth seemed to have inhe

rited the irritability of her father. The least inattention, the slightest provocation would throw her into a passion. At all times her discourse was sprinkled with oaths: in the sallies of her anger it abounded with imprecations and abuse. Nor did she content herself with words: not only the ladies about her person, but her courtiers and the highest officers in the state felt the weight of her hands. She collared Hatton, she gave a blow on the ear to the earl marshal, and she spat on Sir Matthew with the foppery of whose

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dress she was offended.

To her first parliament she had expressed a wish that on her tomb might be inscribed the title of "The virgin queen." But the woman who despised the safeguards, must be content to forfeit the reputation of chastity. It was not long before her familiarity with Dudley provoked dishonourable reports. At first they gave her pain; but her feelings were soon blunted by passion: in the face of the whole court she assigned to her supposed paramour an apartment contiguous to her own bedchamber; and by this indecent act proved that she was become regardless of her character, and callous to every sense of shame. But Dudley, though the most favoured, was not considered as her only lover: among his rivals were numbered Hatton and Raleigh, and Oxford and Blount, and Simier and Anjou: and it was afterwards believed that her licentious habits survived even when the fires of wantonness had been quenched by the chill of age. The court imitated the manners of the sovereign. It was a place in which, according to Faunt, "all enor

mities reigned in the highest degree," or, according to Harrington, "where there was no love, but that of the lusty god of gallantry, Asmodeus."

Elizabeth firmly believed, and zealously upheld, the principles of government established by her father; the exercise of absolute authority by the sovereign, and the duty of passive obedience in the subject. The doctrine, with which the lord keeper Bacon opened her first parliament, was indefatigably inculcated by all his successors during her reign, that if the queen consulted the two houses, it was through choice, not through necessity, to the end that her laws might be more satisfactory to her people, not that they might derive any force from their assent. She possessed by her prerogative whatever was requisite for the government of the realm. She could, at her pleasure, suspend the operation of existing statutes, or issue proclamations which should have the force of law. In her opinion the chief use of parliaments was to vote money, to regulate the minutiae of trade, and to legislate for individual and local interests. To the lower house she granted, indeed, freedom of debate; but it was to be a decent freedom, the liberty of "saying ay or no ;" and those who transgressed that decency were liable, as we have repeatedly seen, to feel the weight of the royal displeasure.

A foreigner, who had been ambassador in England, informs us, that under Elizabeth the administration of justice was more corrupt than under her predecessors. We have not the means of instituting the comparison. But we know that

in her first year the policy of Cecil substituted men of inferior rank in the place of the former magistrates; that numerous complaints were heard of their tyranny, peculation, and rapacity; and that a justice of peace was defined in parliament to be an animal, who, for half a dozen chickens, would dispense with a dozen laws: nor shall we form a very exalted notion of the integrity of the higher courts, if we recollect that the judges were removable at the royal pleasure, and that the queen herself was in the habit of receiving, and permitted her favourites and ladies to receive bribes, as the prices of her or their interference in the suits of private individuals.

Besides the judicial tribunals, which remain to the present day, there were in the age of Eli.zabeth several other courts, the arbitrary constitution of which was incompatible with the liberties of the subject; the court of high commission, for the cognizance of religious offences; the court of star chamber, which inflicted the severest punishments for that comprehensive and undefinable transgression, contempt of the royal authority; and the courts martial, for which the queen, from her hasty and imperious temper, manifested a strong predilection. Whatever could be supposed to have the remotest tendency to sedition was held to subject the offender to martial law; the murder of a naval or military officer, the importation of disloyal or traitorous books, or the resort to one place of several persons who possessed not the means of subsistence. Thus, in 1595, under the pretence that the vagabonds in London were not to be restrained by the usual