tained his pardon, hoped to ingratiate himself with Mary by devising a plan to render her independent of parliament. He submitted it to the inspection of the Spanish ambassador, by whom it was recommended to her consideration. Sending for Gardiner, she bade him peruse it, and then adjured him, as he should answer at the judgment seat of God, to speak his real sentiments. "Madam," replied the prelate," it is a pity so virtuous a lady should be surrounded by such sycophants. The book is naught; it is filled with things too horrible to be thought of." She thanked him, and threw the paper into the fire.

Her natural abilities had been improved by education. She understood the Italian, she spoke the French and Spanish languages; and the ease and correctness with which she replied to the foreigners, who addressed her in Latin, excited their admiration. Her speeches in public, and from the throne, were delivered with grace and fluency; and her conferences with Noailles, as related in his dispatches, show her to have possessed an acute and vigorous mind, and to have been on most subjects a match for that subtle and intriguing negotiator.

LINGARD.

ELIZABETH.

IN the judgment of her contemporaries, and that judgment has been ratified by the consent of posterity, Elizabeth was numbered among the greatest and the most fortunate of our princes. The tranquillity which, during a reign of half a cen

tury, she maintained within her dominions, while the neighbouring nations were convulsed with intestine dissensions, was taken as a proof of the wisdom or the vigour of her government: and her successful resistance against the Spanish monarch, the many injuries which she inflicted on that lord of so many kingdoms, and the spirit displayed by her fleets and armies, in expeditions to France and the Netherlands, to Spain, to the West, and even the East Indies, served to give to the world an exalted notion of her naval and military power. When she came to the throne, England ranked only among the secondary kingdoms; before her death it had risen to a level with the first nations in Europe.

Of this rise two causes may be assigned. The one, though more remote, was the spirit of commercial enterprise, which had revived in the reign of Mary, and had been carefully fostered in that of Elizabeth, by the patronage of the sovereign, and the cooperation of the great. Its benefits were not confined to the trading and seafaring classes, the two interests more immediately concerned. It gave a new tone to the public mind; it diffused a new energy through all ranks of men. Their views became expanded; their powers were called into action; and the example of successful adventure furnished a powerful stimulus to the talent and industry of the nation. Men in every profession looked forward to wealth and independence: all were eager to start in the race of improvement.

The other cause may be discovered in the system of foreign policy adopted by the ministers;

a policy, indeed, which it may be difficult to reconcile with honesty and good faith; but which, in the result, proved eminently successful. The reader has seen them perpetually on the watch to sow the seeds of dissension, to foment the spirit of resistance, and to aid the efforts of rebellion in the neighbouring nations. In Scotland the authority of the crown was almost annihilated; France was reduced to an unexampled state of anarchy, poverty, and distress; and Spain beheld with dismay her wealth continually absorbed, and her armies annually perishing among the dikes and sandbanks of the Low Countries. The depression of these powers, if not a positive, was a relative benefit. As other princes descended, the English queen appeared to rise in the scale of reputation and power.

In what proportion the merit or demerit of these and of other measures should be shared between Elizabeth and her counsellors, it is impossible to determine. On many subjects she could see only with their eyes, and hear with their ears; yet it is evident that her judgment or her conscience frequently disapproved of their advice. Sometimes, after a long struggle, they submitted to her wisdom or obstinacy; sometimes she was terrified or seduced into the surrender of her own opinion: generally a compromise was effected by mutual concessions. This appears to have happened on most debates of importance, and particularly with respect to the treatment of the unfortunate queen of Scots. Elizabeth may perhaps have dissembled; she may have been actuated by jealousy or hatred: but, if we con

demn, we should also remember the arts and frauds of the men by whom she was surrounded, the false information which they supplied, the imaginary dangers which they created, and the dispatches which they dictated in England to be forwarded to the queen through the ambassadors in foreign courts, as the result of their own judgment and observation.

It may be that the habitual irresolution of Elizabeth was partially owing to her discovery of such practices: but there is reason to believe that it was a weakness inherent in the constitution of her mind. To deliberate appears to have been her delight: to resolve was her torment. She would receive advice from any, from foreigners as well as natives, from the ladies of her bedchamber, no less than the lords of her council: but her distrust begot hesitation; and she always suspected that some interested motive lurked under the pretence of zeal for her service. Hence she often suffered months, sometimes years, to roll away before she came to a conclusion; and then it required the same industry and address to keep her steady to her purpose, as it had already cost to bring her to it. The ministers, in their confidential correspondence, perpetually lamented this infirmity in the queen: in public they employed all their ingenuity to screen it from notice, and to give the semblance of wisdom to that which, in their own judgment, they characterized as folly.

Besides irresolution, there was in Elizabeth another quality equally, perhaps more, mortifyingTM to her counsellors and favourites; her care to

improve her revenue, her reluctance to part with her money. That frugality in a sovereign is a virtue deserving the highest praise, could not be denied; but they contended that, in their mistress, it had degenerated into parsimony, if not into avarice. Their salaries were, indeed, low; she distributed her gratuities with a sparing hand; and the more honest among them injured their fortunes in her service: yet there were others who, by the sale of places, and patronage, and monopolies, were able to amass considerable wealth, or to spend with a profusion almost unexampled among subjects. The truth, however, was, that the foreign policy of the cabinet had plunged the queen into a gulf of unfathomable expense. Her connexion with the insurgents in so many different countries, the support of a standing army in Holland, her long war with Spain, and the repeated attempts to suppress the rebellion of Tyrone, were continual drains upon the treasury, which the revenue of the crown, with every adventitious aid of subsidies, loans, fines, and forfeitures, was unable to supply. Her poverty increased as her wants multiplied. All her efforts were cramped; expeditions were calculated on too limited a scale, and for too short a period; and the very apprehensions of present served only to entail on her future and more enormous expense.

An intelligent foreigner had described Elizabeth, while she was yet a subject, as haughty and overbearing; on the throne she was careful to display that notion of her own importance, that contempt of all beneath her, and that courage