felt to be a great national deliverance, and celebrated with deep and universal joy. Passing over the great fires at Southwark, the demonstrations of victory displayed at London Bridge, and the first general but irregular exhibition of religious thankfulness, bursting out also into song and music that are still preserved, the 19th and 24th of November were especially set apart, the first as a holy day to be observed by all people throughout the realm; the latter, as the day on which the queen would make her own public acknowledgments. Her love for her country and her people, her pride in their fame, her sleepless anxiety for their prosperity, can never be denied, whatever else may be said in disparagement of her; and we cannot but think, that it was not merely joy for the security of her crown that glowed in that mighty heart, when, after issuing from Whitehall Palace, and riding in her chariot through the crowded streets; with her train of heroes and statesmen, Queen Elizabeth knelt down at the west door of St. Paul's, and openly and audibly praised God, "who had thus delivered the land from the rage of the enemy." Nor was this the only evidence of feeling too powerful to be restrained within formal limits, with which Elizabeth surprised the noble assembly on that occasion.

After a sermon, "wherein none other argument was handled, but only of praises and glory to be rendered unto God," she broke forth again. with a full heart, exhorting all the people to thankfulness, "with most princely and Christian speeches." When we read of such scenes, it is not difficult to understand how Elizabeth won the name of " Good Queen Bess," or why her name is still traced as it were in golden characters, in the history of the English people."

CHAPTER IV.

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.

IT is time that we attempt some account of the personal character of our famous queen, and we shall attempt it rather by anecdote than by dissertation; perhaps there never was a monarch in any age of the world, whose history so abounded in contradictions and paradoxes. Burleigh summed up her character by saying that "frequently she appeared to be something more than man, and something less than woman,” and perhaps, this is strictly in harmony with her own account of herself, for she claimed to belong to neither masculine, feminine, or neuter gender, but to be in herself all the three. A prime officer with a white staff coming into her presence, she willed him to bestow a place upon a person whom she named. "May it please your highness, madam," saith the Lord, "the disposal of that place by virtue of the white staff."

pertaineth to me "True," said the

queen, "yet I never gave you your office, but that I still reserved myself of the quorum." "Of the quarum, madam," returned the Lord, presuming somewhat too far upon her favour. Whereat she snatched the staff in some anger out of his hand, and told him "he should acknowledge her of the quorum, quarum, quorum, before he had it again." They were not far from the truth who described her as an "Henry VIII., in petticoats;" there are very few traits of her character which represent her clothed in any of the gentle proprieties of womanly beauty and grace; the dignity she had was of the throne, not of the sex, and her appearance and demeanour were only not coarse, because she was a queen, and a queen cast so completely on her own resources, compelled to do battle with so many fierce and hostile influences; she would not have been a desirable wife for any of us, she would always have made herself felt most emphatically in any scene of life. She carried to the British Throne, it must be admitted, something of the valour and vehemence of those more modern ladies, whose wont it is to preside at the stalls of the great Fish Bazaar of Tower Street, London.* This is no exaggeration; she

* Lest this too classical language should seem, dark in a word, "Billingsgate."

E

achieved for Freedom, and for England, perhaps for Europe, a great and noble work, but she was utterly regardless of her means; never had any woman so little of her sex. Her soul was masculine, but not like the soul of the Agrippinas and Zenobias of Rome, or of Tadmor; they move before us queens indeed, in majesty of speech, of sentiment and action; but Elizabeth was a wonderful compound of majesty and meanness of courage and cowardice; of daring and double dealing; it is clear that she loved a plot; to her there was a charm in the ambidexterous cunning, overweighing the fronting glory of the open soul. Elizabeth's thoughts wonderfully hovered around the altars of Matrimony; one wonders how she contrived to escape unchained or unsinged; unsinged, she perhaps did not escape: her character, both as princess in girlhood, and queen in womanhood, has come down to us with remarkable reports, the truth or falsehood of which must be left to the reader's own moral sense of probability. And whether the fox in this instance reviled the grapes beyond the reach, we know not; but certain it is that she perpetually interposed her voice and power wonderfully during her whole reign, to condemn or to prevent marriage, with coarseness and pique, and sometimes with ex