the size of beans, and over it a mantle of black silk shot with silver threads."

This, observe, was over twenty years after the revels of Kenilworth: and two years beyond this date, when the Queen was sixty-seven, a courtier writes: "Her Majesty is well, and every second day is on horseback." No suitor could say a pleasanter thing to her than-" Your majesty is looking very young!" She danced, when it made her old bones ache to dance.

No suitor could say a more inapt thing than to express a fear that a revel, or a play, or a hunt, or a dance might possibly fatigue her Majesty. It would bring a warning shake of the head that made the jewels rattle.

But at last the days come as like days are coming to us all - when she can counterfeit youth no longer. The plays entice her no more. The three thousand court dresses that she left, hang unused in her wardrobe: weaknesses hem her in, turn which way she may. Cecil, the son of her old favorite Burleigh, urges that she must quit her chair

which she clung to, propped with pillows-that she must take to her bed.

Must," she cries, with

a kindling of her old passionate life, "little man, little man, thy father never dared to use such a word to his Queen." The gust passes; and she clings to life, as all do, who have such fast, hard grip upon it. In short periods of languor and repose, taking kindly to the issue- going out, as it were, like a lamp. Then, by some windy burst of passion of hate, flaming up red and white and hother voice a scream, her boding of the end a craze, her tenacity of purpose dragging all friends, all hopes, all the world to the terrible edge where she stands the edge where Essex stood (she bethinks herself with a wild tempest of tears) — the edge where Marie Stuart stood at Fotheringay, in her comely widow's dress; thinks of this with a shrug that means acquiescence, that means stub. born recognition of a fatal duty that ghost does no way disturb her.

But there are others which well may. tell them over?

Shall we

No; let us leave her with her confessor, saying prayers maybe; her rings on her fingers; the lace upon her pillow; not forgetting certain fine coquetries to the last strong-souled, keen-thoughted, am

bitious, proud, vindictive, passionate woman, with her streaks of tenderness out of which bitter tears

flowed out of which kindlinesses crept to sun themselves, but were quick overshadowed by her pride.

Farewell to her!

In our next talk we shall meet a King - but a King who is less a man than this Queen who is dead.

INDEX.

ABBEYS and Priories of Eng- Battle Abbey, 35.

land, 66 et seq.

Beda, 15, 64.

Aldhelm, the Saxon scholar and Beowulf, 41.
poet, 10, 64.

Alfred, King, 17 et seq.
Aneurin, a Welsh bard, the re-

puted author of Gododin, 7.
"Arcadia" of Philip Sidney,
237.

Archery in England, 199.
Arnold, Matthew, on Celtic lit-
erature, 8.

Arthur, King, the legends of, 39
et seq.; Geoffrey's version of,
42; Map's version, 42; Laya-
mon's version, 43.
Ascham, Roger, 197; his

"Betrothed," Scott's novel, 48.
Berners, Lord, his translation of
Froissart, 129.

Bible, Wyclif's translation of,

90; Tyndale's translation,
185; reading of, by the com-
mon people forbidden in reign
of Henry VIII., 191.
Black Prince, 93, 104, 106.
Boccaccio, 83.

Boethius' "Consolation of Phi-
losophy," translated by King
Alfred, 19.

"Boke of the Duchesse," Chau-

cer's poem, 107.

Books at the end of the thir-
teenth century, 62;
decora-
tion of, 65.
"Brut" of Layamon, 43.
Burleigh, Lord, 212, 242.

CADMON, 13 et seq.; possible
influence of his paraphrase on
Milton, 15.

Camden, William, 176, 303.
Camelot, 39, 40.