array of possible husbands which Mary inspected at Holyrood with a certain gay natural excitement mingled with deeper calculations, were passed over languidly and with more fright than pleasure by Elizabeth's preoccupied eyes. "The fair vestal throned by the west," was anything but "fancy-free." She was, on the contrary, entangled in the bonds of a passion which her pride, or her sense of duty, or her conviction of the danger of such a step, prevented her yielding to, but which disgusted her with every reasonable proposition, and kept her in a state of painful excitement and uncertainty. As for Mary, she considered the subject with more natural sentiments. She had the splendid possibility before her of wedding the heir of Spain as she had wedded the heir of France a possibility never open to Elizabeth; and she had, in common with Elizabeth, the choice of an Archduke or two- German princes, such as have since been found so useful for royal marriages. It was Mary who was fancy-free; she looked at the subject with her bright eyes, keen as wit and intelligence could make them, and meditated her choice, while the poor English queen, lovelorn, with no such confidence in herself, turned blank looks upon the princely gentlemen, and made such pretence as she could of an abstract love for her maiden state. It was a clumsy pretence, and deceived no one. Yet it is but just to remember that Elizabeth, helped no doubt by her native indecision and lack of power to dare, was the one who did surmount her inclinations, and conquer in this most difficult struggle.

With Elizabeth it was very different. Her religious difficulties were not to be managed in any passive way. She had to take a bold initiative, to set her hand to the work without loss of time or failure of courage. She was not, as we have said, an earnest Protestant; but her policy, and indeed her very existence as a queen, depended upon her adoption of this cause. She set about its accomplishment in the face of the disapproval of entire Christendom, and the passive resistance and discontent of half of her people. Her bishops were worthless, her clergy insubordinate, her own heart but half in the work. Yet, notwithstanding these obstacles and many more, she accomplished this great revolution, finally constituting and establishing the Anglican Church. And she had a world of intricate foreign complexities to manage. She had to keep Spain at arm's length, without breaking finally with Philip, and to struggle with France for an impossible and undesirable restoration of Calais, making such a fatal and horrible muddle in the mean time of her occupancy of Havre as would have done much to harm a less lucky sovereign. She had to maintain her own seat, to keep a wary eye on her disaffected subjects, to restrain the pretensions of Mary, and to endure the continual mortification of being called upon, both by friends and enemies, to decide upon her own successor. Up to this moment, however, Mary would And she too had the question of her mar- seem to have been not only the sweeter and riage perpetually before her, but in another fairer woman, but the more successful and shape from that which pleased the imagina- satisfactory sovereign. She managed her tion of Mary. In Elizabeth's case it was turbulent subjects more wisely than her wise complicated by an unhappy and unworthy counsellors in France would have done it for love. This woman was of flesh and blood her. She bore with them, tolerated them, like other women. And, notwithstanding and endured their intolerance in a manner her genius, her clear perceptions, her sense quite remarkable — as different from all the of what was due to her rank and her coun- preconceived notions of what so young a try, she loved, as many another woman has woman, naturally looking upon heresy with done, a man no way her equal, neither in horror, and strong in the absolutism of her blood-which was in some respects an in- age and her rank, would do, as it is possible different matter-nor in character. His to conceive. She had the good sense to give weakness, his wickedness, his many imper-up, or at least to postpone, the dangerous fections, were fully known to her; and yet she loved him with that fatal persistence which even women who have most command over themselves sometimes display. A hasty soul like that of Mary would not have hesitated to act upon such a preference; but this was impossible to the slow uncertain doubting intelligence of Elizabeth. Thus the fair

delight of reprisals. The great object she had most at heart she pursued at least with candour and openness. To demand that your nearest relative, whom you profess to regard with affection and friendship, should acknowledge you as her heir, is not a gracious nor pleasant request; yet it was made honestly, and with all the softenings possible,

much womanly caressing and tenderness, | peak, which receded farther and farther the and submission of the younger to the elder. more the eager pursuers hastened after it. Mary was ready to marry as her good sister On one condition or another it might or wished, or at least so she said she was should be granted; but something always ready to take her good sister's advice and to occurred to make the condition impossible, be entirely guided by her - always if her or leave an opening for escape. About the own first condition was granted. Nothing marriage she was suspicious, jealous, uneathat Elizabeth could ask would be too much sy. Unable to come to any decision on the for the Queen of Scots to give, as long as matter for herself, she watched the promptthe matter was commenced by the recogni- er counsels of Mary with mingled fear and tion of her ultimate claims. This pertinacity envy, putting her veto upon every suitor was natural enough when the magnitude of who had a chance of satisfying the ambition the inheritance is considered, and it was at of the Scottish queen. When she had exthe same time a matter of policy, and one hausted all other means of putting a stop to which rallied round her her entire nation, these plans of marriage, she took the reunanimous, if not heroic. The idea had seized markable and unexplainable step of offering upon the mind of Scotland. The hope of the man whom she herself loved, Robert uniting both kingdoms under one sway had Dudley, to her beautiful rival. Whatever at last entered the obstinate and pugnacious her motive might be, this was the final way intelligence of the country; but it was a she took of interposing in Mary's concerns. union only to be accomplished through their Whether it was with the bitter irony of desown dynasty When this thought had once peration, as one who would throw her last been taken hold of, it became the fixed idea and best gift into the lap of a successful opof the Scottish mind. Even the courtly ponent- a kind of bitter outcry of Take Lethington insisted on demonstrating to all!-whether it was to beguile her own Elizabeth the advantages of this union with subjects as to her own inclinations, and prove an apparent insensibility to the fact that her entire appreciation of the impossibility only Elizabeth's death, childless, could bring of marrying him herself; or whether it was about so desirable a consummation. But finally the supreme self-sacrifice of an imMary was a woman of delicate insight, and passioned woman, eager, if she could not made no such mistake. She plead her own give him the greatest, at least to secure the cause persistently, steadily, but tenderly. next greatest position for the object of her She threw herself upon Elizabeth's affection, love it is impossible to decide. But the professed unbounded devotion to her, prob- fact is that she did offer to her cousin and ably felt a certain desire to please and satis- rival the man whom she did not hesitate to fy the woman who could serve her interests say she would have married herself, had that so mightily. She was ready to be treated been possible. Probably the offer was not as daughter or younger sister, to receive meant to be accepted. At all events, it was Elizabeth's advice, recommendation, almost made. "You like better yonder long lad," commands. Very possibly there was in all she said, disdainfully, comparing the stripthis submission a sting which the elder wo-ling Darnley with the mature and princely man, not so much older after all, would feel Leicester. It is not to Elizabeth that natuprofoundly; for in everything that was said ral sympathy turns in all this intricate busithere was an unconscious setting aside of ness; and yet, setting prejudice aside, there Elizabeth, a relegation of her own person is a human interest about this woman of a and existence into the settled, elderly, un- profounder kind than that which attends changeable condition, which no woman the bright footsteps of Mary in this prefercares to recognize or to see recognized as ence of her fate. Mary as yet is but the her own inevitable lot. But there is no evi- fairy princess, the perennial heroine of rodence that.Mary meant this. She did her mance, born to be adored, to be the fairest spiriting gently, and with many a profession of the fair, and to marry the bravest of the of tenderness, giving all honour to her sis- brave-the first primitive conception of ter, although her own claims naturally over- poetry. But in Elizabeth all the complicatopped, in her estimation, those of all the tions exist that are necessary for a higher world beside. strain of art. A tragic struggle is going on within her. Though she is supreme, she has to yield, bending her proud neck, and subduing her imperious will; she has to bear the consciousness that all the sweeter gifts are for her rival, and to take what consolation she can by making a virtue of neces

Elizabeth's reception of all these appeals was neither sisterly nor candid. She met Mary's requests, not by a distinct negative, but by those artful compromises that were natural to her. She hung, as it were, the prize so much longed for on an unattainable

sity. She is mortified in her own person, mortified in the object of her affection, upon whom no man will look with such respect as she thinks his due. She has to suffer all natural and seemly opportunities of mating herself, and giving heirs to her crown, to pass by. It was her own will, yet it is not to be supposed that the possibility was relinquished without a pang; while continually it is Mary, Mary, that is being dinned into her ears- Mary, who is to succeed her, to replace her on her virgin throne, to have the love, the children, the happiness, as well as the kingdom - Mary, who has already assumed her title, whose claim all good Catholics prefer to her own, and whose proclamation as heir would probably put into some assassin's hand the weapon which should end Elizabeth's life. She said it was like her death-knell ringing in her ears, and no one can wonder that she did so. She was not a woman to attract affection or to win hearts. She was capable of infinite dissimulation, of downright lying, and of vacillation unspeakable. She has no such hold upon the tenderness of mankind as the fair and brilliant creature in Holyrood, who steered her gentle bark with such skill and daring, and carried. with her such a freight of hopes. Yet the deeper interest rests with Elizabeth for within her, as around her, the agony and struggle of life was in full progress; her heart was contending with its mysteries, her will subdued, and yet struggling with its stern necessity. A higher sense of truth, a little more natural sweetness, would have made Elizabeth at this moment one of the most touching and interesting figures in all history.

might have received a queen's husband as it had received a king's wife, or an English Kirk-of-Field might have blazed up into the midnight sky, and driven the world wild with horror. All this might have been, and probably looked like enough to the bystanders. While, on the other hand, Mary of Scotland, a sage and irreproachable princess, might have chosen, from the highest motives, the most likely of her suitors, and reigned with him, knowing no delirium of either happiness or anguish. Such would have been the likeliest prognostication for the severest wisdom seemed to preside over the Scottish Queen's matrimonial deliberations. She would have married the mad and melancholy Carlos of Spain, and the thought of it drove England and France alike into hysterics. She had even thoughts of marrying her brother-in-law, Charles IX., should that turn out to be the best arrangement. Prudence, national policy, calm reason, was to guide this marriage. It was to be made on the soundest principles; inclination and all foolish thoughts of personal happiness being sublimely set aside. Mary discussed even the Archdukes, harmless ancestors of all our German husbands, with majestic equanimity. She would even, perhaps, have married Leicester, had the acknowledg ment of her rights come with him. And there was another Englishman whom it would be politic for her to marry-the long lad of whom Elizabeth had made contemptuous mention and who, next after Mary herself, had the best hereditary claim upon the English throne. Mary discussed young Darnley along with her Archdukes. And he was more near at hand, and could be had to look at, which doubtless was an advantage. He was the only man who could strengthen her claim upon England, that great centre of her desires, and union with him was the most startling menace which could be given to Elizabeth. All these political reasons were discussed and made apparent before the arrival of the hero on the scene; and, up to this time, every step Mary had taken, every project she had made, had been dictated by good sense and prudence. Indeed, it would be but just to believe that it was more than this that she had been honestly trying to

The historian may well pause at this epoch of these two lives, while still all is uncertain, while yet no Fate has thrown its coming shadow upon either of these royal women. Passion as yet had not entered into the field as an active agent; where it existed it was kept in bounds by the thousand restraints which govern a mature mind and affect a great position. If any spectator had essayed the perilous gift of prophecy, it would probably have been, according to the ordinary rules of vaticination, Elizabeth who was to fall. She it was whose politics and purposes were colored by an attachment unworthy of her, and to which everybody do her best, with ulterior designs no doubt, about her believed she might have succumbed but such as were no shame to her, and that at any moment. She might have married it was a certain sweet influence of youth Leicester any day of all those days, and no- and happiness which had brightened the body would have been surprised; and she air about Holyrood, and conciliated the might have lived to find out his unworthiness, nation. She had no struggle within herself and fall into dark plots for ridding herself to hamper her. The adversaries and the of him, as her father had done. The Tower conflicts were without, and did not daunt