she confided to him the command of the expedition despatched to support Henry the Fourth, he had evidently attracted her favourable notice; but in 1597, when Lord Effingham was intrusted by her with secret orders to prevent Essex from exposing himself to the chief risk in the attack upon Cadiz, her predilection had become so strong that she seems not even to have possessed the decent desire to disguise it: yet at this time she had nearly perfected thirteen lustres, or, in other words, had just arrived at the sober age of sixty-five.

Lord Bacon has left an elaborate attempt at an apology for his own shameful conduct to Essex in his disgrace, in which, without at all clearing himself, he describes, in the most characteristic manner, the universal peremptoriness and wilfulness of this authoritative and wayward sovereign. Nothing was too large or too small, too wide or too narrow, to escape her supervision and imperious interference. A curious extract from the pages of Hentzner, a traveller cited by Hume, shall now be laid before the reader; and we imagine we shall then have finally demonstrated that a residence at the court of Elizabeth could neither have been very pleasant, nor at all encouraging to a man of sense, of feeling, and self-respect.

"No one spoke to Queen Elizabeth without kneeling, though now and then she raised some with waving her hand. Nay, wherever she turned her eyes, every one fell on his knees. Even when she was absent, those who covered her table, though often persons of quality, neither approached it, nor retired from it without kneeling, and that often three times."

The names of Shakspeare, Sir Philip Sydney, and Spenser have cast an imperishable lustre over the reign of Elizabeth; yet, after all, this was not a school in which to have reared high-minded and honest men. The intensity of their emulation stimulated the talents of her ministers and courtiers; the state and its mistress had brilliant and indefatigable servants; but among the courtiers Diogenes would have failed to discover the object of his search.

We shall now extract from the pages of Bayle, the account of her death, and the occasion of it :

"After the execution of the Earl of Essex, the queen was a pretty long time as merry as before, particularly during the embassie of Mareschal de Biron. Therefore 'tis very likely, that if she died for grief upon account of the Earl of Essex, 'twas not so much because she had put him to death, as because she came to know that he had recurr'd to her clemency in such a way as she had promised would

never fail. M. du Maurier will explain us this little mystery :-It will neither be needless, says he, nor disagreeable, to add here what the same Prince Maurice had from Mr. Carleton, the English Ambassador in Holland, who died secretary of state, so much known under the name of Lord Dorchester, a man of very great merit, viz.-That Queen Elizabeth gave a ring to the Earl of Essex, in the height of her passion, bidding him to keep it well; and that whatever he might do, she would forgive him, if he sent her back the same ring. The earl's enemies having since prevailed with the queen (who, besides, was provoked by the earl's contempt of her beauty, which decayed through age), she caused him to be tried for his life; and in the time of his condemnation, still expected that he would return her ring, when she might pardon him according to her promise. The earl, in the last extremity, had recourse to the wife of Admiral Howard, his kinswoman, and entreated her, by means of a person he trusted, to deliver that ring into the queen's own hands; but her husband, one of the earl's mortal enemies, to whom she imprudently revealed it, having hindered her from performing the message, the queen consented to his death, full of indignation against so haughty and fierce a man, who chose rather to die than fly to her clemency. Some time after, the admiral's lady being fallen sick and given over by her physicians, sent the queen word that she had a secret of great importance to disclose to her before she died. The queen being come to her bedside, and having caused every body to withdraw, the admiral's lady delivered to her preposterously that ring from the Earl of Essex, excusing her not delivering it sooner, because her husband would not let her. The queen withdrew instantly, struck with a mortal grief, passing fifteen days sighing, without taking any sustenance, laying herself down on her bed with her clothes on, and getting up a hundred times in the night. At last she famished and grieved herself to death, for having consented to the death of her lover, who had recurr'd to her mercy."

Thus died a woman, who, with all her levity and lack of modesty, is yet most probably entitled to demand of posterity to inscribe on her tomb, "Here lies a virgin queen;" though posterity, or at least the austere portion of it, may, in acceding to her claim, feel disposed to stipulate, that the orthography of the last word shall be changed, and that it shall be written "quean." Even in her own day, such was the opinion of some of the Puritans; but widely different were the impressions she left in the minds of the many. As a specimen of the unbounded admiration which her subjects continued to express for her

after her death, we will extract from old Camden a species of epitaph, which he composed for her. We print it as we find it in the original folios, determined that the encomiastic antiquary shall not be deprived by us of any of his loyal intentions to be emphatic.

"Alas! how inconsiderable is her monument in comparison of the noble qualities of so heroical a lady! She herself is her own monument, and a more magnificent and sumptuous one than any other. For let these noble actions recommend her to the praise and admiration of posterity:-RELIGION REFORMED, PEACE ESTABLISHED, MONEY REDUCED

TO ITS TRUE VALUE, A MOST COMPLEAT FLEET BUILT, OUR NAVAL GLORY RESTORED, REBELLION SUPPRESSED, ENGLAND FOR FORTY-THREE YEARS TOGETHER MOST PRUDENTLY GOVERNED, ENRICHED, AND STRENGTHENED, SCOTLAND RESCUED FROM THE FRENCH, FRANCE ITSELF RELIEVED, THE NETHERLANDS SUPPORTED, SPAIN AND IRELAND QUIETED, AND THE WHOLE WORLD TWICE SAILED ROUND."

Yet, after all, we must not be too prone to be perpetually lauding her political sagacity and conduct. Her success and glory were probably as much the effect of chance as of talent. Not by benevolent objects wisely adopted and resolutely pursued, but by accidents of temper and disposition, she happened to be the ruler for her time. It her people had not been as pliant and servile, as she was wilful and imperious, instead of an increase of the national power, rebellion and ruin must have occurred. If her actions be closely investigated, the sources of the public prosperity will be found more in her vices than in her virtues; yet during her reign, England obtained so vast an advance in the European system, that not only her own subjects, but succeeding generations, have been unable to scan her except through an atmosphere of light which dazzles and confuses their judgment. Even the philosophical and dispassionate Hume is repeatedly yielding to what may be termed an hereditary incitement to commend extravagantly her talents for empire; and the consequence is, that he is constantly contradicting in one page what he advanced in a prior one. Yet no one knew better than this great historian the real causes of her splendid career; for, after repeating a series of her most arbitrary, dishonest, and impolitic public acts, he adds :-" Notwithstanding this conduct, Elizabeth contrived to be the most popular sovereign that ever swayed the sceptre of England, because the maxims of her reign were conformable to the principles of the times, and to the opinions generally entertained with regard to the constitution."

ANNE OF DENMARK,

QUEEN OF JAMES THE FIRST.

ANNE was the second daughter of Frederick the Second, third king of Denmark, in the line which succeeded that of Christiern the Second, deposed for his extravagant excesses. She was born on the 12th of December, 1575. Her grandfather was the greedy Lutheran who absorbed the whole property of the Church into his civil list; and who strengthened his crown by uniting to it in perpetuity his father's duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. Her father became wealthier still by the tolls of Elsinore, and by enormous duties on a particular and very popular beer. Her brother, younger than herself by fifteen months, who succeeded to the Danish throne in his eleventh and was crowned in his twentieth year, became James the First's boon companion, and was the king so celebrated in Howell's Letters for having drank thirtyfive toasts at the great banquet at Rhensburgh. He was carried away in his chair at the thirty-sixth, and left the officers of his court unable to rise from the floor till late next day.

Little is known of the youth of the princess Anne but that she was borne about in arms till she was nine years old. Before she was ten, there was talk of her marriage at her father's court. A daughter of Denmark, in the preceding century, had been wedded to a Scottish king; and questions of territory, involving the ultimate possession of the Orkney and Shetland Islands, remained unsettled between the two countries. These now induced the proposition of a similar alliance, and the hand of this young princess was offered to the reigning king of Scotland. Four years had to pass, however, before state objections to the marriage were removed; and when it was celebrated by proxy at Cronenburg, on the 20th of August, 1589, Anne's father was dead, and the kingdom was governed by a regency in her brother's naine. From Cronenburg, at the close of the ceremony, a fleet of twelve Danish ships set sail for Scotland, to convey the wife to her new home;