Chapter IX: Part 9

Harassed beyond endurance, she resolved to make an attempt to escape from these never-ending vexations. But whither to go? She could not obtain permission to reside elsewhere; and if Napoleon demanded her, no continental power, except Russia, could give her an asylum. To obtain a conveyance to England was impossible, except from some port to the north of Hamburg; and to reach that distant region, it was necessary to traverse the whole of Europe, in constant danger of being intercepted and detained. After eight months of irresolution, she found courage and opportunity to make the attempt; and quitting Coppet secretly, she reached Berne in safety, obtained a passport for Vienna, and hastily traversing Switzerland and the Tyrol, arrived at the Austrian capital, June 6, 1812. But this was neither a safe nor pleasant resting-place. The Emperor was in attendance on his son-in-law at Dresden; and the Austrian police thought fit to pay their court to Napoleon, by following up the example of annoyance which he had set. Mad. de Stael, therefore, hastened on her route to Russia, through Moravia and Gallicia, honoured all the way by the especial attention of the police, on whose happy combination of “French machiavelism and German clumsiness,” she has taken ample revenge in her ‘Ten Years of Exile.’ She crossed the Russian frontier, July 14, and in the joy of having escaped at last from the wide-spread power of Napoleon, she sees and describes every thing in Russia with an exuberance of admiration, which the position of the country at that moment, and the kindness which the writer experienced, may well excuse. The French armies had already crossed the Vistula, and the direct route to St. Petersburg being interrupted, she was obliged to make a circuit by Moscow. After a hasty survey of the wonders of that city, she continued her route to St. Petersburg, where she was received with distinction by the Emperor and his consort. But England was still the object of her desires, and towards the end of September, she quitted the metropolis of Russia for Stockholm. There, during a winter-residence of eight months, she composed the journal of her travels, to which we have so often referred; and in the following summer she arrived in London.

She was received in the highest circles of our metropolis with an enthusiastic admiration, which no doubt was rendered in part to the avowed enemy of Napoleon, as well as to the woman of genius. Sir James Mackintosh, in his journal, gives a lively description of the manner in which she was _fêted_. “On my return I found the whole fashionable and literary world occupied with Mad. de Stael—the most celebrated woman of this, or perhaps of any age.... She treats me as the person whom she most delights to honour. I am generally ordered with her to dinner, as one orders beans and bacon: I have in consequence dined with her at the houses of almost all the cabinet ministers. She is one of the few persons who surpass expectation; she has every sort of talent, and would be universally popular, if in society she were to confine herself to her inferior talents—pleasantry, anecdote, and literature, which are so much more suited to conversation than her eloquence and genius.” A very characteristic observation was made by the late Lord Dudley—“Mad. de Stael was not a good neighbour; there could be no slumbering near her, she would instantly detect you.”

The publication of her long-expected work on Germany maintained the interest which Mad. de Stael had excited, during the period of her residence in England. It is comprised in four parts,—on the aspect and manners of Germany,—on literature and the arts, as there existing,—on philosophy and morals,—and on religion and enthusiasm. For an analysis of it we may best refer to the elaborate criticism of Mackintosh, in the Edinburgh Review, No. XLIII, who gives it the high praise of “explaining the most abstruse metaphysical theories of Germany precisely, yet perspicuously and agreeably; and combining the eloquence which inspires exalted sentiments of virtue, with the enviable talent of gently indicating the defects of men and manners by the skilfully softened touches of a polite and merciful pleasantry:” and of being “unequalled for variety of knowledge, flexibility of power, elevation of view, and comprehension of mind, among the works of women, and in the union of the graces of society and literature with the genius of philosophy, not surpassed by many among men.”

After the restoration of the Bourbons, Mad. de Stael returned to France. She stood high in Louis XVIII.’s favour, who was well qualified to enjoy and appreciate her powers of conversation; and he gave a substantial token of his regard by the repayment of two millions of francs, which the treasury was indebted to her father’s estate. At the return of Napoleon, she fled precipitately to Coppet. She was too generous to countenance the gross abuse lavished on the fallen idol; and some sharp repartees, at the expense of the time-servers of the day, seem to have inspired Napoleon with a hope that he might work on her vanity to enlist her in his service. He sent a message, that he had need of her to inspire the French with constitutional notions: she replied, “He has done for twelve years without either me or a constitution, and now he loves one about as little as the other.”

Concerning the last three years of her life, our information is very scanty. She had contracted a second marriage, with M. Rocca, a young officer, who, after serving with distinction in the French army in Spain, had retired, grievously wounded, to Geneva, his native place. For an account and apology for this much-censured and injudicious connexion, the date of which we have not found specified, but which should seem to have been previous to her flight to Coppet, since Rocca accompanied her on the occasion, we must refer to Mad. Necker de Saussure. It appears by her statement (and this is a material consideration in estimating the extent of the lady’s weakness), that though she must have been more than forty, and the gentleman was twenty years younger, she had inspired Rocca with a devoted and romantic passion. “Je l’aimerai tellement,” he said to one of his friends, “qu’elle finira par m’épouser,” and he kept his word. A less distinguished woman might have contracted a marriage in which the disparity of years was greater, at a slight expense of wondering and ridicule; but probably Mad. de Stael felt that the eyes of the world were upon her, and that any weakness would be eagerly seized by her enemies; and, perhaps, had a natural dislike to resign a name which she had rendered illustrious. She judged ill: the secrecy was the worst part of the affair. The union, though generally believed to exist, was not avowed until the opening of her will, which authorised her children to make her marriage known, and acknowledged one son, who was the fruit of it. The decline of M. Rocca’s health, which never recovered the effect of his wounds, induced her to take a second journey to Italy in 1816. At that time, her own constitution was visibly giving way. She became seriously ill after her return to France, and died, July 14, 1817, the anniversary of two remarkable days of her life. These were, the commencement of the French revolution, and the day on which, by entering Russia, she finally escaped from Napoleon. M. Rocca survived her only half a year. He died in Provence, January 29, 1818.

Mad. de Stael’s last great work, which was published after her death, is entitled ‘Considérations sur les principaux Événements de la Révolution Française,’ a book, says Mackintosh, “possessing the highest interest as the last dying bequest of the most brilliant writer that has appeared in our days, the greatest writer, of a woman, that any age or country has produced.” That it was left unfinished is the less to be regretted, because it is not a regular history of the revolution, but rather a collection of penetrating observations and curious details, recorded in the true spirit of historic impartiality, and therefore a most valuable treasure to the future historian. The scope of the book, in accordance with her warm admiration through life of the English constitution, is to show that France requires a free government and a limited monarchy. The catalogue of her works is closed by the Œuvres Inédites published in 1820, of which the principal is ‘Ten Years of Exile.’ They are collected in an edition of eighteen volumes 8vo., published at Paris, in 1819–20, to which the ‘Notice sur le Caractère et les Ecrits de Mad. de Stael,’ by Mad. Necker de Saussure, is prefixed.

The leading feature of Mad. de Stael’s private character was her inexhaustible kindness of temper; it cost her no trouble to forgive injuries. There seems not to have been a creature on earth whom she hated, except Napoleon. “Her friendships were ardent and remarkably constant; and yet she had a habit of analysing the characters, even of those to whom she was most attached, with the most unsparing sagacity, and of drawing out the detail and theory of their faults and peculiarities, with the most searching and unrelenting rigour; and this she did to their faces, and in spite of their most earnest remonstrances. ‘It is impossible for me to do otherwise,’ she would say; ‘if I were on my way to the scaffold, I should be dissecting the characters of the friends who were to suffer with me upon it.’” Though the excitement of mixed society was necessary to her happiness, her conversation in a tête à tête with her intimate friends is said to have been more delightful than her most brilliant efforts in public. She was proud of her powers, and loved to display and talk of them: but her vanity was divested of offensiveness by her candour and ever-present consideration of others. Of her errors we would speak with forbearance; but it is due to truth to say that there were passages in her life which exposed her to serious and well-founded censure. As a daughter and mother she displayed sedulous devotion, and the warmest affection. Though never destitute of devotional feeling, her notions of religion in youth seem to have been very vague and inefficient. But misfortune drove her sensitive and affectionate temper to seek some stay, which she found nothing on earth could furnish; and in later years, her religion, if not deeply learned, was deeply felt. Of this, the latter portion of Mad. Necker de Saussure’s work will satisfy the candid reader. And though her testimony to the truth and value of religion was for the most part indirect, we may reasonably believe that it was not ineffective. “Placed in many respects in the highest situation to which humanity could aspire, possessed unquestionably of the highest powers of reasoning, emancipated in a singular degree from prejudices, and entering with the keenest relish into all the feelings that seemed to suffice for the happiness and occupation of philosophers, patriots, and lovers, she has still testified that without religion there is nothing stable, sublime or satisfying; and that it alone completes and consummates all to which reason and affection can aspire. A genius like hers, and so directed, is, as her biographer has well remarked, the only missionary that can work any permanent effect upon the upper classes of society in modern times—upon the vain, the learned, the scornful and argumentative, ‘who stone the Prophets, while they affect to offer incense to the Muses.’” (_Ed. Review, No. LXXI._)

PALLADIO.

Palladio is distinguished among the renowned professors of his age as the chief modifier of the revived style of Roman architecture. The celebrity however which attaches to his name, though just in regard to its extent, is not always correctly appreciated: inasmuch as a bigoted admiration for his precepts and designs, on the ground of their intrinsic excellence, has too frequently supplanted that more sober estimate, which results from a consideration of the circumstances under which those precepts and examples were given to the world. Neither have succeeding ages been sufficiently discriminating in respect to the predecessors and contemporaries of Palladio, several of whom either effected or assisted in effecting much, of which the credit has been given by the world at large too exclusively to him.

Our less informed readers should therefore be apprised that, for more than a century before the time of Palladio, the ancient Roman style of architecture had been in progress of revival. Brunelleschi, who died in 1444, was the first to exhibit, in the upper part of Florence cathedral, some departure from the Italian Gothic, and an approach towards the more classic models of old Rome. Alberti, his pupil, published a system of the Five Orders, and Bramante, Raphael, and San Gallo, successively advanced the restored style in the famous Basilica of St. Peter, then erecting. Sansovino, in several costly edifices at Venice, and San Micheli, in many at Verona, anticipated the best efforts of Palladio, and Vignola also distinguished himself as a practical architect and author. Serlio was the first to measure and describe the ancient examples of Rome; and in 1537, published the first part of his ‘Complete Treatise on Architecture.’

_Engraved by R. Woodman._

PALLADIO.

_From a Picture by L. Biglieschi in the Collection of the Capitol at
Rome._

Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge

_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street._
]

Much therefore had been already done to facilitate the operations of a succeeding candidate for architectural distinction. Materials had been amassed, and it only remained for a comprehensive genius to analyse them more closely, to modify them in detail, and to enlarge, by the exercise of a chastened fancy, the range of their combinations. At this juncture the subject of our memoir commenced his professional career.

Andrea Palladio was born at Vicenza, November 30, 1518. His parents are said to have been “in the middle rank of life;” in belief of which, Temanza discredits the traditionary account that he worked as a common mason at the Villa di Cricoli, and that the name ‘Palladio’ was bestowed upon him, as a kind of ennoblement, by his patron Trissino, who is said to have been his first architectural instructor. It is at least certain that, if Trissino taught him not, he assisted in stimulating his professional ardour. Vitruvius and Alberti appear to have been his early studies, and allusions are made to his proficiency in geometry and polite literature at the age of twenty-three. The knowledge which he derived from books, far from satisfying, prompted him to seek a deeper insight into the details and the principles of his art; and, during several visits to Rome, he employed himself in delineating from admeasurement the ancient remains of that city.

Among the earliest testimonies to his growing fame, was the commission he received to make certain costly additions to the Basilica, or Hall of Justice, in his native town. The building, before alteration, seems to have been a dilapidated example of the Italian Gothic style. It was the opinion of Giulio Romano, who was also consulted on the subject, that whatever new work might be necessary to afford strength or supply convenience, the character of the old building should be strictly preserved; and the appropriate and unprejudiced idea of that architect merits quite as much praise as the realized design of his more fortunate competitor. But the romantic rage for the restored architecture of Pagan antiquity was too prevalent for the common sense of Giulio to find support; and the Græco-Roman arcades of Palladio were carried round the Gothic basilica, just as, under the same infatuation, the Corinthian portico of Inigo Jones was subsequently attached to the old Cathedral of St. Paul’s in London.

Considering the particular arrangements and present mixed style of this noted Basilica to have been peremptorily insisted on by the public, we can then concede to Palladio the merit of an honourable conquest over difficulties. The adjoined wood-cut represents in simple outline one of the seven bays or compartments, which form the longitudinal elevation of the main building. The relative situations of the perpendiculars _a_ to _b_, as well as their height, were unalterable. The heights _a_ to _c_, and _c_ to _d_, were also fixed. If, therefore, simple arches had been adopted, affording the required superficies of aperture, their limited height must have borne a very disproportioned ratio to their extended breadth. If columns had been employed alone, the great width of the interspaces would have been offensively opposed to the laws which govern that department of architectural design. The application, therefore, of the smaller columns is here most admirable. By this measure, a central arch of good proportions is obtained, and a sufficient supply of light is secured to the interior by the lateral openings under the imposts, and by the circular apertures above them.

In 1546 the building of St. Peter’s church was in active progress, when its third architect, San Gallo, died. Trissino, who was in Rome at the time, exerted himself to establish Palladio as San Gallo’s successor. It is well known however that Michael Angelo was appointed to that important post, and that he remains recorded on the scroll of fame as the most celebrated of the architects of St. Peter’s.

In 1547 Palladio appears to have finally established himself as the leading architect of Northern Italy; nor was he less fortunate in opportunities for professional display, than competent to avail himself of them. Vicenza is literally a museum of Palladian design. Besides the Basilica, already noticed, and the Olympic Theatre, which was designed after ancient models, he constructed the great majority of the private palaces, the proprietors of which were content to impoverish their fortunes, that they might vie with each other in giving scope to the talents of their architect. The churches del Redentore and S. Giorgio, with other edifices public and private, evince the estimation in which Palladio was held at Venice; and most of the other cities in the north of Italy also contain examples of his genius. The country around exhibits a variety of his designs, among which is the Villa di Capri, called the Rotunda, which has been imitated by the Earl of Burlington, at Chiswick, and by other architects in several parts of England. It stands upon a hill, and commands a beautiful view on every side. This was the architect’s reason for adopting the four fronts and four porticoes.

Oppressed (says Scamozzi) by the multiplicity and fatigue of his studies, and distressed by the loss of his sons (Leonida and Orazio), he sank under the influence of an epidemic, which terminated his life August 19, 1580, at the age of sixty-two. The Olympic Theatre had only been commenced on the 23rd of May preceding his death, and its completion was intrusted to his surviving son Silla, who, with Leonida, had studied architecture. The Olympic Academicians attended their deceased brother to the grave, and gave public testimony of their feelings by the recital of funeral odes, and by the observance of all the “pomp and circumstance” consistent with the sepulture of so eminent a man. He was interred in the church of the Dominicans at Vicenza.

Palladio was no less remarkable for modesty than for professional eminence. The affability of his conduct won for him the perfect love of all workmen engaged in his buildings. He was small in stature, but of admirable presence; and united, to the most respectful bearing, a jocose and lively manner.

Palladio’s Treatise on Architecture, in four books, published at Venice in 1570, has been several times reprinted. A magnificent edition in three volumes, folio, appeared in London in 1715; and another has been since issued from the Venetian press. He also composed a work on the Roman Antiquities generally, and left many manuscripts on the subject of military as well as civil architecture. He illustrated the Commentaries of Cæsar, by annexing to Badelli’s translation of that work, a preface on the military system of the Romans, and by supplying numerous copper plates, designed for the most part by his sons Leonida and Orazio. He also studied Polybius, and dedicated a (yet imprinted) work on the subject to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. His manuscripts, having been left to the senator Contarini, were subsequently dispersed, and the Earl of Burlington became possessed of many of them. The latter nobleman in 1732 published the fruits of Palladio’s researches concerning the Roman baths; and, some time after, appeared a truly beautiful work, intitled ‘Le Fabbriche ei Disegni di Andrea Palladio, raccolti ed illustrati da Ottavio Bertotti Scamozzi.’ The latter is by far the most interesting book connected with the name of Palladio. It enables us, at once, critically to examine his numerous designs, and to estimate them by a standard far superior to that which is merely founded on Vitruvian precept and Roman example. Our present acquaintance with all that Palladio had the means of knowing, and with very much more of which he was entirely ignorant, gives us a power and a right of censorship which the bigot alone will oppose and deny. Since the day of this celebrated architect, the Roman remains have been measured with more minute accuracy, and examined with a more philosophical regard to the principles which regulated the arrangement of their component parts. The volume of Greek art, compared with which that of Rome was but a debasing translation, has since that time been opened to the world; and, however we may continue to admire the industry by which Palladio obtained his then extended knowledge, the fancy and pictorial beauty which pervade many of his designs, and the worth of the architect himself as a man of genius, taste, and letters, it is yet our duty to direct the architectural student to look much farther than Vicenza for examples of pure design, and for principles of essential value.

The authorities for the life of Palladio, in addition to those already referred to, are the works of Vasari, Tiraboschi, and Milizia.

]

_Engraved by W. Holl._

ELIZABETH.

_From a Picture in His Majesty’s collection at St. James’s Palace._

Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street._
]

ELIZABETH.

Elizabeth, queen of England, daughter of Henry VIII. by his second wife, Anne Boleyn, was born September 7, 1533. Her religious principles were early fixed on the side of the Reformation by Dr. Parker, her mother’s chaplain, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, to whose care Anne Boleyn, not long before her violent death, recommended this her only child, with the charge that she should not want his wise and pious counsel. She passed her early days happily, in the seclusion of private life, uninitiated in the dissipation of the court, and unmolested by its intrigues; but a few months after the accession of her sister Mary, she was arrested on suspicion of being concerned in Wyat’s insurrection, of which it was the object to oppose the marriage of Mary with the Archduke Philip, and to raise the princess Elizabeth to the throne. Her life was placed in imminent danger, by her removal from her abode at Ashridge in Buckinghamshire to London during a severe illness, in compliance with an order to bring her, “quick or dead.” She was committed to the Tower, and exposed to a capital charge of high treason. Two councils were held, before which she defended herself with entire presence of mind, and great boldness. Several councillors voted for her death, but it was ultimately decided that she could be convicted only of misprision of treason, which was no longer a capital offence. She owed her life, therefore, to the saving power of the law; not, as has often been stated, to the intercession of Philip: who did, however, stand forward afterwards in her behalf so as to obtain a mitigation of the severity of her imprisonment, which was continued after her acquittal on the capital charge. It may seem inconsistent in a bigot to the Catholic religion to interfere in behalf of a person on whom the hopes of the Protestants were known to depend: but Philip’s hatred against France was greater than his or even his wife’s zeal in the cause of popery; and the political motives of his conduct are obvious. In the event of Mary dying without issue, the Queen of Scotland, who was actually betrothed, and soon after married to the Dauphin, stood next in succession to Elizabeth. Supposing the intermediate link in the chain to be broken, the crown of England, united to that of France, would give a fatal preponderance to the already formidable rival of the Spanish monarchy. Philip, therefore, had a direct interest both in preserving the life and conciliating the good will of the princess: he foresaw that the demise of his queen must take place before long, and he had formed the scheme of espousing her sister and successor, for which a dispensation would readily have been obtained from the pope.

The reign of Elizabeth began November 17, 1558, when she was twenty-five years of age. Her person was graceful, her stature majestic, and her mien noble. Her features were not regular; but her eyes were lively and sparkling, and her complexion fair. Her spirit was high; and her strong natural capacity had been improved by the most enlarged education attainable in those days. She wrote letters in Italian before she was fourteen; and at the age of seventeen she had acquired the Latin, Greek, and French languages. In addition to these studies she had ventured on the high and various departments of philosophy, rhetoric, history, divinity, poetry, and music. As soon as she was fixed on the throne, her interest and her principles engaged her in plans for the restoration of the Protestant religion. For although Pope Pius IV. promised, on her submission to the papal supremacy, “to establish and confirm her royal dignity by his authority,” yet she must have felt, that with the avowal of popery would be coupled the virtual admission that her father’s divorce from Catherine of Arragon was null and void; and, consequently, that Anne Boleyn was not a wife but a concubine, and her own pretensions to the crown downright usurpation. It was only by rejecting the Pope as her judge that she could maintain her mother’s fair fame and her own legitimate descent. Many writers, Bayle among others, have attempted to prove that she was at heart little more of a Protestant than her father; and her determination to retain episcopacy was sufficient to raise that suspicion in the minds of the adherents to the presbyterian system of church government.

While she was princess she received a private proposal of marriage from Sweden; but she declared, “she could not change her condition.” On her becoming queen, her brother-in-law, Philip II. of Spain, addressed her; but this match also she declined. In the first parliament of her reign, the house of commons represented it as necessary to the welfare of the nation “to move her grace to marriage.” She answered, that by the ceremony of her inauguration she was married to her people, and her subjects were to her instead of children; that they would not want a successor when she died; adding, “And in the end, this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare, that a queen having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin.” Several great personages proposed a matrimonial union with this illustrious princess; but she maintained her celibacy to the last. The Duke of Anjou seems to have been the most acceptable of her suitors. On his visit to England in 1581, not only was he received with much public parade, but she vouchsafed him strong tokens of personal attachment, and even suffered the marriage articles to be drawn up. But the strong remonstrances of her ministers and favourites finally prevailed, and the intended marriage was broken off.

The compilers of memoirs have racked their brains for some plausible explanation of Elizabeth’s repugnance to matrimony. When overtures were first made to her she was young, and had a good person, which she spared no art in setting off to advantage: she was notoriously fond of admiration, and was no less jealous of the personal beauty of Mary, Queen of Scots, than of her competition as a rival sovereign, or as a claimant of the crown of England. Neither prudery nor coldness could be imputed to her. Her gaiety extorted a sarcastic exclamation from an ambassador: “I have seen the head of the English church dancing!” She chose her favourites, Leicester, Essex, Raleigh, and others, from among the most comely, as well as the most valiant and accomplished of her subjects. Melvil, who had been sent by Mary of Scotland to the court of Elizabeth, relates in his Memoirs, that on creating Lord Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester and Baron of Denbigh, at Westminster, with much solemnity, the queen assisted at the ceremonial, and he knelt before her with great gravity: “but,” he says, “she could not refrain from putting her hand to his neck, smilingly tickling him, the French ambassador and I standing by.” In relating his diplomatic transactions, he furnishes other proofs of the queen’s partiality for the Earl of Leicester. He had occasion to name before her “my Lord of Bedford and my Lord Robert Dudley. She answered, it appeared I made but small account of my Lord Robert, seeing I named the Earl of Bedford before him; but that ere long she would make him a far greater Earl; and that I should see it done before my return home. For she esteemed him as her brother and best friend, whom she would have herself married, had she ever intended to have taken a husband. But being determined to end her life in virginity, she wished the queen her sister might marry him.” It is no wonder that her propensity to gallantry should have been stigmatized by popish writers, or that they should even have ventured to assail her character for chastity: even those of the reformed religion were somewhat scandalized by the levities of their ecclesiastical governess. Her foreign biographer, Gregorio Leti, in his ‘Histoire d’Elizabeth,’ says, “I do not know whether she was so chaste as is reported; for, after all, she was a queen, she was beautiful, young, full of wit, delighted in magnificent dress, loved entertainments, balls, pleasures, and to have the handsomest men in her kingdom for her favourites. This is all I can say of her to the reader.”

The charge of personal depravity in so illustrious a sovereign deserves a fuller examination than is admissible within our limits. But it is in a great measure discredited by the circumstance that it originated with those Romish and political enemies, who perseveringly strove to destroy the queen, as the main prop of that fabric they were moving every engine to overthrow. Dr. Sanders and Cardinal Allen, the popes, the Spanish writers and their partisans, make statements, some of them manifestly untrue, others unsupported by respectable testimony. Among her own subjects, the popular scandal turned chiefly on Leicester, Hatton, and Essex; but without a single criminating fact as to either. Bacon states the case candidly, and probably puts it on its true ground: “She suffered herself to be honoured, and caressed, and celebrated, and extolled with the name of love, and wished it and continued it beyond the suitability of her age. If you take these things more softly, they may not even be without some admiration, because such things are commonly found in our fabulous narratives, of a queen in the islands of Bliss, with her hall and institutes, who receives the administration of love, but prohibits its licentiousness. If you judge them more severely, still they have this admirable circumstance, that the gratifications of this sort did not much hurt her reputation, and not at all her majesty, nor even relaxed her government, nor were any notable impediment to her state affairs.” Some writers of secret history have assigned the danger to which it was thought she would be exposed in bearing children as the real reason for her perseverance in celibacy.

We do not propose to relate the events of the reign of Elizabeth, inasmuch as our object does not extend beyond a sketch of her personal character. It is perhaps the most brilliant period in English history; it called into action some of the most able statesmen and greatest warriors of whom this country could ever boast. Leti tells us that Pope Sixtus V. was her ardent admirer, and placed her among the only three persons who, in his estimation, deserved to reign: the other two members of this curious triumvirate were Henry IV. of France and himself. He once said to an Englishman, “Your queen is born fortunate: she governs her kingdom with great happiness; she wants only to be married to me, to give the world a second Alexander.” The same author, in his life of Sixtus, records a secret correspondence of that pope with Elizabeth; among other particulars of which he relates the following anecdote. Anthony Babington, a gentleman of Derbyshire, with other English papists, had engaged in a conspiracy against the queen. Their project was, after having assassinated her, to deliver Mary of Scotland from prison, and to place her on the throne. Babington and three of his accomplices armed themselves against the possible failure of their enterprise, by applying to the pope for prospective absolution, to take effect at the time of their last agonies. His Holiness complied with their demand; but is said instantly to have despatched due warning to the queen.

This conspiracy was the preliminary to an event, which has been justly characterized as the stain of deepest dye on the fair fame of Elizabeth,—the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1586. It would be foreign to the subject, to relate the circumstances which led that princess to take refuge in England, trusting to Elizabeth’s promises of protection and kindness. Her reception at first was as favourable as was perhaps consistent with due attention to the public safety, considering that the Roman Catholic portion of British subjects held her to be the rightful sovereign, and Elizabeth an illegitimate and heretical usurper. But feelings of habitual enmity, enforced perhaps by the arguments of her political advisers, overpowered the sympathy of the first moments, and suggested the advantages to be taken of a defenceless competitor. Elizabeth, therefore, after having in the first instance ordered her to be treated like a queen, afterwards committed her to close prison. On the discovery of Babington’s plot, in which Mary was deeply implicated, the queen of Scots was arraigned of high treason before commissioners specially appointed by the crown. By that solemn tribunal, she was tried and found guilty, and by Elizabeth was delivered over to execution. Even Bohun, in his character of Elizabeth, though in general her panegyrist, says on this occasion, “By this action, she tainted her reign with the innocent blood of a princess, whom she had received into her dominions, and to whom she had given sanctuary.” If the sentence was executed, not in vindication of the offended laws, but as a sacrifice to personal revenge, Elizabeth’s guilt was greatly aggravated by her extreme dissimulation in the management of the affair. She no sooner received intelligence of Mary’s decapitation, than she abandoned herself to misery and almost despair: she put on deep mourning; her council were severely rebuked; her ministers, and even Burleigh, were driven from her presence with furious reproaches. Her secretary Davison was subjected to a process in the Star-Chamber for a twofold contempt, in having revealed her Majesty’s counsels to others of her ministers, and having given up to them the warrant which she had committed to him in special trust and secrecy, to be reserved for a case of sudden emergency. But Davison’s apology, an extract from which was inserted by Camden in his Annals, has since been found entire among the original papers of Sir Amias Paulet. From this authentic source it appears, that Davison was made her unconscious agent and instrument. Those who have endeavoured to extenuate the apparent treachery of Elizabeth, have alleged that the queen of Scots kept the queen of England in continual dread of dethronement; and that if the necessity existed to take the life of the queen of Scots, it was equally necessary that it should be done with a show of reluctance, and the least possible odium to the queen of England. Such has been the defence, both of the act itself, and of the subsequent dissimulation. But it would be difficult to apologize for her proceedings against Davison, an able and honest servant, whom she disgraced and ruined, for the purpose of impressing the belief that Mary was executed without her knowledge and contrary to her intentions. Right and wrong must be differently estimated in sovereigns and ordinary persons, if the sacrifice of such a victim to the shade of Mary or the indignation of her son can be justified.

The reign of Elizabeth lasted forty-four years, four months, and six days. It was distinguished by great actions; it raised the British name to a high and glorious rank in the scale of nations: and we of the present times are indebted to it for some of our greatest advantages. But the sovereign herself closed her long and eventful life in a state of deep melancholy. Her kinsman, Sir Robert Cary, relates, with the quaintness of the time, the circumstances of his visit to her on her death-bed. “She took me by the hand, and wrung it hard, and said that her heart had been sad and heavy for ten or twelve days; and in her discourse she fetched not so few as forty or fifty great sighs. I was grieved at first to see her in this plight; for in all my lifetime I never knew her fetch a sigh, but when the Queen of Scots was beheaded.” She died March 24, 1603, in her seventieth year. Few as are the particulars of her life which we have been able to admit into our narrative, they have perhaps been sufficient to give an outline, however faint, of her character. It has been drawn out in form, and with fairness, by Lord Bolingbroke, in the following passage from his Idea of a Patriot King. “Our Elizabeth was queen in a limited monarchy, and reigned over a people at all times more easily led than driven; and at that time capable of being attached to their prince and their country by a more generous principle than any of those which prevail in our days, by affection. There was a strong prerogative then in being, and the crown was in possession of greater legal power. Popularity was however then, as it is now, and as it must always be in mixed government, the sole foundation of that sufficient authority and influence which other constitutions give the prince gratis and independently of the people, but which a king of this nation must acquire. The wise queen saw it; and she saw too how much popularity depends on those appearances that depend on the decorum, the decency, the grace, and the propriety of behaviour of which we are speaking. A warm concern for the interest and honour of the nation, a tenderness for her people and a confidence in their affections, were appearances that ran through her whole public conduct, and gave life and colour to it. She did great things; and she knew how to set them off according to their true value, by her manner of doing them. In her private behaviour she showed great affability, she descended even to familiarity; but her familiarity was such as could not be imputed to her weakness, and was therefore most justly ascribed to her goodness. Though a woman, she hid all that was womanish about her; and if a few equivocal marks of coquetry appeared on some occasions, they passed like flashes of lightning, vanished as soon as they were discovered, and imprinted no blot on her character. She had private friendships, she had favourites: but she never suffered her friends to forget that she was their queen; and when her favourites did, she made them feel that she was so.”

Our delineation of Elizabeth has been rather that of a very great personage, than of a good woman; but it must be admitted on all hands, that the poison of calumny has been largely administered, in proportion to the invidiousness of her position. This general lot of greatness fell the heavier on her, in consequence of the severe laws which she was compelled to enact and execute against the papists. The libels against Elizabeth’s good fame were put forth mostly by persons of that proscribed sect, who have represented her, not as indulging the frailties from which her most strenuous advocates cannot exonerate her, but as a monster of cruelty, avarice, and lust. It is but justice to place in contrast with so hateful a picture the noble character ascribed to her even by a Jesuit, in a book published in the Catholic metropolis of France. Père d’Orleans, in his ‘Histoire des Revolutions d’Angleterre,’ speaks thus: “Elizabeth was a person whose name immediately imprints in our minds such a noble idea, that it is impossible well to express it by any description whatsoever. Never did a crowned head better understand the art of government, and commit fewer errors in it, during a long reign. The friends of Charles V. could reckon his faults: Elizabeth’s enemies have been reduced narrowly to search after hers; and they, whose greatest concern it was to cast an odium upon her conduct, have admired her. So that in her was fulfilled this sentence of the Gospel, that the children of this world are often wiser in their views and designs than the children of light. Elizabeth’s aim was to reign, to govern, to be mistress, to keep her people in submission, neither affecting to weaken her subjects, nor to make conquests in foreign countries; but yet not suffering any person to encroach in the least upon the sovereign power, which she knew perfectly well how to maintain, both by policy and by force. For no person in her time had more wit, more skill, more judgment than she had. She was not a warlike princess; but she knew so well how to train up warriors, that England had not for a long time seen a greater number of them, nor more experienced.”

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Changed “Majolica” to “Maiolica” on p. 37. 2. Changed “and same other” to “and some other” on p. 48. 3. The “Z” was reversed in “CORTEZ” on p. 122 and in “LEIBNITZ” on p. 132. 4. Changed “Evénemens” to “Événements” on p. 170. 5. Changed “ed i” to “ei” on p. 176. 6. Did not correct the variant spellings of “Raphael”. 7. Silently corrected typographical errors. 8. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed. 9. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. 10. Superscripts are denoted by a carat before a single superscript character or a series of superscripted characters enclosed in curly braces, e.g. M^r. or M^{ister}.