the monstrous Regiment of Women," women sat on all the thrones of Europe, or at least exercised the royal authority. The Queen Regent in Scotland Mary of Guise, Elizabeth in England, Mary in Scotland: before long, and, for a more limited period, Catherine de' Medici in France. habitable world. But this mass of informa- this boiling up of new opinions, and the tion, instead of being poured abroad in thou-heavy settling down of old authorities and sands and thousands of sheets, and spreading institutions, Philip was the only male soverto the utmost limits of the universe, remained | eign of power and influence in Western Eua profound mystery, we will not say in the rope. The emperor, of the younger branch secret councils, but in the single mind of the of the great Spanish house, stood much aloof: laborious king. Hundreds of despatches ex- he had enough to do with Germany and the ist, evidently read with the utmost care, cor- Turks. But as if Providence had determined rected by the hand, meditated by the deepest to perplex and try the faith of John Knox, in thought of the monarch. Royalty was with despite or in scorn of his terrific blast against Philip no quiet, majestic repose, like that of the gods of Epicurus; no enjoyment of the pomps and luxuries of the throne; not even the free and lofty consciousness of power, moving as it were by a superior will and deliberate impulse the great wheels of human affairs. No banker's clerk in the severest office; no laborer in the dreariest seasons It might seem, too, that Providence took and on the most barren soil; we may almost delight, if we may venture the expression, say no galley slave, worked harder than the in heightening the romance of these times; sovereign of a large part of Europe and of we may say more reverently, in taking the almost all the known provinces of the New wise in their own craftiness, by sudden interWorld. As hardly anything stirred in the positions which changed at once and instanworld without his cognizance, so hardly any-taneously the balance of conflicting parties, thing moved without an impulse or influence dashed to the ground the fairest schemes, and from him. The similitude is homely, pehaps in a moment made a total revolution in hucoarse, but we can compare him to nothing man affairs. During the short period of nine but a huge spider, seemingly quiescent at years comprehended in Mr. Froude's two the dark corner of his web. That web over-volumes - November, 1558, to February, spread the world, and every thread of it, every filament, throbbed and palpitated towards him, bearing its imperceptible but sure intelligence, and conveying his influence -we had almost written his venom-in unbroken and as imperceptible force to every remotest extremity. European politics had shifted their centre of unity; it was no longer Rome, as in the medieval times; it was no longer the pope to whom, as to the heart of the world, circulated, and from whom flowed back, the current of human affairs. It was Spain; it was the King of Spain whose words went abroad into all lands; whose policy might seem the pivot on which turned the destiny of humankind. 1567-comes first the death of Mary of Guise, the Queen Regent of Scotland. This might have been expected in the ordinary course of events: but it had great weight in the affairs of Scotland, and, for the time, greatly increased the strength of the Reforming Lords. But the death of Henry II., by the "accidental thrust of a Scotch lance," changed at once the whole politics of France, and, through France, of Europe. The death of Francis II. made another revolution as sudden and as complete. From Queen of France, backed by the unresisted power of her uncles, the Guises, from the bold, avowed competitor of Elizabeth, claiming, as was asserted, by a more legitimate title, the crown It is a very curious fact, that during these of England, Mary became no more than eventful times, and in this crisis of the Queen of barbarous and inhospitable Scotpower and of the religion of mankind; in land: instead of the pomp and voluptuousthis Maelstrom of the conflicting tides of hu-ness of the court of Paris, she had to conman interest, human opinion, when nothing front a poor, a fierce, and rude nobility, was fixed, nothing stable; when the whirl- arrayed against each other in implacable facing currents mingled the most opposite fac- tions, and the stern rebuke of Knox. The tions in the same eddy, and dashed against government of France was thrown into the each other those vessels which had been ac- hands of Catherine de' Medici. What had customed to ride in the calmest amity; in it been if the dire malady which reduced Elizabeth to the brink of the grave (she was | artfully prepared shiftings of scene and of utterly despaired of, she lay insensible for action; the turns of fortune and of fate; the four days) had been permitted to take its awful importance, it might seem, of the iscourse? As it was, her peril, by making the sue. What was that issue? succession a question of national life or death, England: whether she should crouch back, The fate of could not but have a powerful effect on the if not forever, for years, under the yoke of minds of her subjects, and so on the course Spanish power and Romish religion, or bound of events. We may add the plague at forward and at least make the first step toHavre, which reduced so awfully the rising wards her designated place as the van-leader military force of England, and could not but in the race of human progress; as the one for a time lower the tone and pretensions of great model of a free monarchical constituElizabeth. At a later period, human wick- tion; as dimly foreshadowing what after edness might seem, with the suddenness and some centuries she was to become under the awfulness of divine visitation, to take upon rule of Queen Victoria. itself the working out of these pregnant and fateful catastrophes. The death of poor Amy Robsart, not unforeseen nor unforeboded, whether or not caused by crime, (and by whose crime?)—by abandoning Elizabeth to the uncontrolled and fatal influence of Leicester, well-nigh imperilled her throne, and, more than that, her fair fame. Of the murder of the Duke of Guise, Mr. Froude observes (i. p. 494), "that one single shot struck the key-stone from the arch of the Catholic confederacy, and changed the politics of Europe "-the Guise family fell, with their head, into comparative obscurity and insignificance. * Still further on, the sudden though premeditated murder of Rizzio, and -inevitably, it should seem, to follow-the murder of Darnley, plunged Mary at once, and in a day, from the dangerous rival of Elizabeth, from the hopeful champion but now of Spanish and popish intrigue against the freedom and the religion of England, to a dethroned outcast, a fugitive in the kingdom of her antagonist, and at length her victim. The destiny of the world might seem to hang on the conflict, on the opposing characters and fate of these two wonderful women, Elizabeth of England and Mary of Scotland. In its interest-its more than historic interest -it was never surpassed by tragedy or novel, in what the old Greeks would have called the жερinétɛia, in the breathless rapidity of the movements, yet at the same time the subtle unravelling of the double plot; the at times violent and instantaneous yet skilfully and *Even the death of De Quadra, just as he attained the triumph of his diplomacy, the marriage of Mary of Scotland with Carlos, King Philip's son and heir, seems to have disorganized the whole scheme, and set all afloat again. From a prison Elizabeth at her accession came forth to be acknowledged with one voice Queen of England. From that prison there had been every chance-there was, indeed, an earnest desire, a fixed determination on the part of her enemies-that she should go forth to the scaffold. We have been told that the secret of her suspected treason (some correspondence with France) lies hid in a letter, written in an unread and as yet unreadable cipher. In her seclusion, Elizabeth could only show, of high qualities, courage and prudence. For her acquirements and her accomplishments we may rest, perhaps, in full faith on old Roger Ascham. No one doubts her familiarity with Greek and Latin: Latin she spoke fluently, Greek afterwards to the wonder and admiration of both the universities (perhaps their Greek was not so strong as to be fastidious); of modern languages, especially of Italian, she was a consummate mistress. That, emerging thus from obscurity, she took her seat upon the throne with perfect dignity, selfpossession, even majesty; that her words, her unprompted words, were full of vigor and wisdom, all are agreed. She was now twenty-five years old. Yet, when she looked at home, and when she looked abroad, the position of Elizabeth at her accession and during the first years of her reign was, perhaps, the most extraordinary, the most difficult, in which sovereign was ever placed. She was at war with France, she was the ally of Spain. England had been dragged into the war for the interests, the ambition, by the authority of Philip. England had borne the greater part of the burden; she had suffered the most ignominious losses of the war. She had lost Calais, the last relique worshipped with all the blind zeal and fondness of relique-worship by the whole was Protestant as regards the authority, the kingdom. This loss had sunk deep into the tyrrany of Rome, we require no further testiold and pre-occupied heart of Mary: grief mony, as to all her earliest acts and profor Calais was her one proud, indelible Eng-ceedings, in her private chapel, in her public lish feeling. The country was in such an measures, than that of the Spanish ambassautter state of exhaustion that against a French dor, De Feria. "Obstinate, perverse, wicked, descent there was absolutely no defence. In irreclaimable heretic"-"heretic to be put the language of a writer of the day— "The queen poor; the realm exhausted; the nobility poor and decayed; good captains and soldiers wanting; the people out of order; justice not executed; all things dear; excesses in meat, diet, and apparel; division among ourselves; war with France; the French king bestriding the realm, having one foot in Calais and the other in Scotland; steadfast enemies, but no steadfast friends.” -I. p, 8. down by craft, by force, by any means," is the burden of all his letters; and it is to his utter dismay and astonishment that the Catholic Philip condescends to temporize that he does not, at all hazard, at any cost, at any sacrifice, crush the baneful spawn which he foresees may wax and grow into an untamable dragon. We do not wish to disturb our readers' seriousness, but, somehow or other, Sheridan's Critic is constantly, either from its genuine wit or from some perverse old associations, blended in our mind with the reign of Elizabeth. We do not allude to the warning against "Scandal about Queen Elizabeth," which Scott so cleverly placed as his motto before" Kenilworth;" but to a scene, the triumph of Mr. Puff's tragic art, which singularly typifies almost this whole reign, especially its commencement: "There's a situation for you !-there's an heroic group! You see the ladies can't stab Whiskerandos; Besides this total destitution of all materials, even of defence, there was a debt then esteemed and felt to be of enormous, of irretrievable magnitude. And in this war with France the Protestant, by education, by principle, by disposition, was the ally-the faithful ally, she must be, or seem to be (unless she would expose herself to be the victim of a Catholic league of the pope, of Philip, and of France, almost of the world)-of ultra-Papal Spain. And yet, in heart and in mind, she was not Protestant enough to take the desper-he durst not stab them, for fear of their unate plunge (utterly desperate it might seem to the boldest fanatic), and set herself at the head of the Reformation. She, a queen, with the strongest hereditary, inborn, indelible conviction of the sanctity of royal authority, must resolve to be the head of rebels, as the Reformers were in every kingdom of Europe; rebels sternly suppressed in Spain by fire and the stake; not yet goaded by insufferable cruelty to irresistible revolt in the Low Countries; rebels now cowed, and not strong enough to resist persecution in France; rebels distracted by what appeared implacable feuds in Germany; rebels in Scotland under the author of the Trumpet-blast against the monstrous Regiment of Women"! We know not whether her sagacity had already discerned what Mr. Hallam somewhere calls the "Presbyterian Hildebrandism" in the systems of Calvin and of Knox; but to that in which the strength of Protestantism seemed to lie, the Puritanism-we know no better word-which the English refugees had contracted at Frankfort and at Zurich, Elizabeth was as averse as to Papalism. Still that she 66 cles; the uncles durst not kill him, for fear of their nieces. I have them all at a dead lock, for every one is afraid to let go first!" Even so Elizabeth dared not defy or quarrel with Philip, for fear, not of him only, but of her own Catholic subjects; Philip could not stab the heretic to the heart, for fear of France; Philip, too, was in dread of the heretics in the Low Countries; the King of France (Henry II.), of the Huguenots; Elizabeth could not resolutely take part with the Reformers in France or in Scotland; hatred of England and nationality, would not allow the Scotch Reformers to league heartily with Elizabeth. Elizabeth could not, or would not, boldly take their part, from dread of a rival for her own throne in Mary, believed by most of her Catholic subjects, asserted by many, to be the legitimate Queen of England. No one could "let go first "-no one could move on account of the dagger at his or her throat; no one could strike the other without provoking a more formidable enemy. Never was such a game of political cross-purposes, which no dexterity could play out, no address bring to a safe-determination. On the issues of this conflict hung the future of England, of religious reformation, and this depended upon a woman-in some respects a very woman. and the greatest peril. which loomed over the future of England, of human liberty, and reformed religion, passed away with the restored ascendency of Cecil. It is really curious to trace Cecil throughout these volumes; and let us remember that it was Elizabeth who had the wisdom to choose Cecil from the host of her not less ambitious and more obsequious councillors; and that to Cecil alone, she was, with slight breaks, constant to the end : "To Cecil, indeed, it was that Elizabeth had turned with exceptional and solitary confidence. He had received her instructions beforehand how to act; and while she herself remained at Hatfield, without waiting to communicate with her, he assumed the instant direction of the government. Within an hour of Mary's death he had sketched the form of the proclamation. The same day he changed the guard at the Tower. The ports were closed. Couriers sped east, west, north, and south, to Brussels, to Vienna, to Venice, to Denmark. The wardens of the marches were charged to watch the Northern Border. Before the evening of the 17th of November, the garrisons on the Kent and Sussex shores had trimmed their beacons, and looked to their arms. A safe preacher was selected for the Sunday's sermon at Paul's Cross, that no occasion might be given to stir any dispute touching the governance of the realm.' But Elizabeth had her good genius. By her side as she emerged from her prison, the firm supporter of her steps as she ascended her throne, stood Sir William Cecil, and by her throne almost throughout her reign remained Cecil-faithful to the end, wise to the end; in all material points, and with some brief interruptions, trusted to the end. In all this revelation of the dark secrets of domestic and foreign policy, the wisdom of Cecil but shines the brighter and more conspicuous. We mean not that in this labyrinth of intrigue and counter-intrigue, of duplicity and counter-duplicity, of mendacity and countermendacity, through which Wellington himself could hardly have kept a straightforward course, Cecil did not meet craft with craft, hypocrisy with hypocrisy; did not use base tools to work against base tools; did not countermine works of darkness with works of darkness; but considering the warfare in which he was engaged, the enemies against whom he had to strive, the interests which he had, we say not to reconcile, but to balance against each other; the queen, the woman, we must add, whom in all her humors, caprices, passions, prejudices, he had to keep in the path of honor and of glory, it is marvellous how his character comes forth, with still more commanding greatness, in the broad and glaring light which Mr. Froude's discoveries Let us hear the unsuspicious testimony of have thrown upon him. Whenever Eliza- the Spaniard, De Feria: "Cecil governs the beth went wrong, Cecil was not heard, Cecil queen. He is an able man, though an acwas absent, Cecil was in disgrace, or his in- cursed heretic " (p. 68); "that pestilential fluence was in abeyance; and it is perhaps scoundrel Cecil" (p. 77). The Spaniard has more extraordinary, when Elizabeth righted, here lost his manners as well as his temper. as she always did come right-when her bet- Cecil would have followed a bolder policy ter nature returned, as it almost always did with regard to the Scotch Reformers. He return, this regeneration was either inspired corresponded (Elizabeth knew that he did) by Cecil, or urged by Cecil for the advantage with the Lords of the Congregation. To what of the country, for the fame of Elizabeth her- this policy might have led, we know not; but self. At one period only of obscuration, the it would have saved Elizabeth from the shame, conduct of Cecil seems inexplicable, nor do and from the mischief of much base duplicity. we believe that Mr. Froude has quite ex-"Cecil would pluck safety only from the plained it; and at that time when the baleful nettle of danger" (p. 168). In the hour of star of Leicester was in the ascendant, at its peril, when Philip threatened war, when very height, Cecil, in his desperation, had there were to be— almost withdrawn from the contest, and left Elizabeth to her own wayward and perverse will. But Cecil rallied, if Cecil had ever really despaired; Elizabeth came to her senses, "The next step, characteristic both of Cecil and his mistress, was to stanch the wounds without the delay of a moment, death."-I. pp. 14, 15. through which the exchequer was bleeding to "six thousand Spaniards thrown upon the Norfolk coast; all Catholic England rising to welcome them; and Elizabeth obliged to retrace her steps, restore the Catholic bishops, marry Carlos, and live as a satellite of Philip archbishops on liturgies and articles, with se-this was the scheme which filled the imag-cret agents in every corner of Europe, or with ination of the Spanish ministers, and which foreign ministers in every court, Cecil is to faded away only when the queen surprised be found ever restlessly busy; and sheets of friend and foe by rising triumphant over her difficulties by her own energy and skill."-I. 173. paper, densely covered with brief memoranda, the great duel with Rome to the terraces and The Church of England is no less indebted to Cecil. He gave Archbishop Parker to the queen; and on the blamelessness and prudence of Archbishop Parker how much deThere are some very remarkable papers pended! If a Grindal or a Whitgift had been then the primate, what had been the with regard to the Fisheries, at the time when Church? To Cecil's honest religious ear- land for no more religious motive than the the fasts were retained in the Church of Engnestness, hear the testimony of De Quadra-maintenance of the fisheries in the Channel. "Cecil, who is the heart of the business, On the Corn Question the noble descendants of alone possesses her confidence, and Cecil is Cecil at Burleigh and at Hatfield will be deobstinately bent on going forward with his Evangel till he destroy both it and himself" lighted to find him a rigid Protectionist; and in the circumstances of the time he will per(January 1560).—I. p. 183. haps find indulgence for his heresy with the severest Political Economists.* "A paper of measures," thus writes Mr. Froude," was sketched by Cecil for the national defences, the first of which-characteristic of his simple piety-was to see the realm set in order with a clergy, that the ire of God light not upon the people (Mar. 1560).-I. p. 210. Even so in political affairs is it to the end of these volumes. Cecil, everywhere Cecil. Philip warns his new ambassador, De Silva: So long as Cecil remains in power, you must be careful what you do." De Silva replies, Cecil has more genius than the rest of the council put together, and is therefore envied and hated on all sides " (ii. pp. 89 and 102). Even as to desperate Ireland he gives the best, because the boldest and most honorable advice" (ii, 410).† The Treaty of Edinburgh (July, 1560) was the work of Cecil. That the treaty was never ratified, that it seemed to make worse confusion, was the result of circumstances of the death of Francis II. and the altered position of Mary Queen of Scots, which Cecil could not foresec, over which he had no control. If Cecil was the good genius, assuredly Cecil's temporary loss of influence through Leicester was the evil genius of Elizabeth. It his absence in Scotland, only showed how in- was this fatal weakness, her passion for this dispensable he was to Elizabeth and to Eng-vain, unprincipled, incapable man, which land. We shall revert to the one questionable act of Cecil, his intercourse with De Quadra. Nor must we confine the usefulness of Cecil to foreign, or what were called state affairs. 'In the revolution which was silently going on in the social condition, Cecil was no less what we cail the Government : "In this, as in all else, Cecil was the presiding spirit. Everywhere among the state papers of these years Cecil's pen is ever visible, Cecil's mind predominant. In the records of the daily meetings of the Council Cecil's is the single name which is never missed. In the queen's cabinet, or in his own, sketching Acts of Parliament, drawing instructions for ambassadors, or weighing on paper the opposing arguments at every crisis of political action; corresponding with nearly wrecked her fame and her country; which even after she had resolutely burst the bondage and submitted-reluctantly, but absolutely submitted-to the will of her subjects, who, she avowed, would not permit her to marry Leicester; it was the yet uneradicated, if subdued, passion which made her, so fatally, |