Raleigh, with his visionary gaze fixed always beyond the sea; Bacon, yearning to bring men's minds to the full knowledge of his New Philosophy; Spenser, touched by the fairy grace of his own creation; and Sidney, the Galahad of that noble band; there, too, was the great Lord Burghley, her faithful minister for more than forty years; there were the rugged figures of the Seamen, and such courtly favourites as Leicester and Essex.

And in their midst stands Elizabeth, always alone, in the stately isolation best suited to her imperious nature, which could never brook the sharing of her power with a husband.

She is described by contemporary writers as of middle-height, graceful, and of regal bearing, with a fair complexion, a hooked nose, hazel eyes, and a broad forehead crowned with masses of fair reddish hair; her hands were small, and, like those of Queen Victoria, beautifully shaped, and she lost no opportunity of displaying them; her bearing was like her father's, and so was her manner, cheery and hearty when pleased, and violent when angry, distributing cuffs and caresses equally among her favourites, according to her temper at the moment, and possessed of a vanity even greater than that which had proved to fatal to her unhappy mother.

Gallantry, under Elizabeth, became a profession; her Court was filled with young men of noble and gentle birth, in whom promise of any kind usually met with recognition; thither they came, and there they were retained, to bask in the somewhat capricious smiles of the Virgin Queen, who loved to have all men at her feet, and who exacted from her courtiers a lover-like demeanour, and a fictitious personal devotion even to the year of her death at the age of seventy-two.

But, in spite of this weaker side to her nature, Elizabeth was the true daughter of Henry VIII., and to no man was she prepared to yield "the half of her kingdom"; where policy came in, her affections could always be made to draw back, her heart was never allowed to govern her head.

Nowhere is she better described than in the words which Sir Walter Scott puts into the mouth of the Earl of Leicester: "I think God, when He gave her the heart of a woman, gave her the head of a man to control its follies. . . . She will accept love-tokens,-ay, and answer them too,-push gallantry to the very verge where it becomes exchange of affection,-but she writes nil ultra to all which is to follow, and would not barter one iota of her supreme power for all the alphabet of both Cupid and Hymen."

Her early life had not been such as to encourage or develop natural affections; bereft of her mother by her father's command, imprisoned, and almost condemned to death by her sister, and continually separated from all those for whom she cared, repression of her feelings must have become a habit. Then had come her first, and perhaps her deepest, love-affair, that with Admiral Seymour, who wooed her in a somewhat boisterous fashion when she was only sixteen years old. But the trouble which this attachment and Seymour's ambition brought about, her own danger and disgrace, and the Admiral's death upon the block, gave her such a terrible warning against royal ladies indulging in private affections, that she seemed to take the lesson to heart for life.

The best beloved among her Court favourites was, without doubt, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and she seemed at one time intent on making him her husband.

He was the son of the Duke of Northumberland, and brother of the unfortunate Guildford Dudley, whose fate as Prince-Consort might well have deterred Robert from seeking the same position.

Robert was a man of unusual personal beauty, tall and graceful, with finely-cut features, and keen dark eyes, and skilled in all knightly accom