Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/562

548 elevated. His guiding-star was the doctrine of expediency, not high nor honourable policy. He was cold, calculating, and selfish; and his self-love prompted him to be the obsequious instrument of a lawless and imperious queen. On his deathbed he wrote to his son, concluding with this notable sentiment, which was, indeed, the sole law of his life, "Serve God by serving the queen, for all other service is bondage to the devil." Now the really great statesman serves his sovereign by serving God, and by that means makes him or her remembered in the world with love and benedictions. But he was a minister after Elizabeth's own heart, obedient, worldly-wise, and what is called—by those who estimate a man, not by his honour, his truth, or his conscientiousness—a safe man. She therefore maintained him in his office against all enemies, and especially her own favourites, for forty years; and in his last illness she waited on him like a nurse, and wept bitterly for his loss. "He has left behind him," says Lingard, "a voluminous mass of papers, his own composition, the faithful index of his head and heart. They bear abundant testimony to his habits of application and business, to the extent and variety of his correspondence, and to the solicitude with which he watched the conduct and anticipated the designs of both foreign and domestic enemies; but it is difficult to discern in them a trace of original genius, of lofty and generous feeling, or of enlightened views and commanding intellect." His son, modelled on his own principles, succeeded him in the councils of the queen, and perpetuated the same cautious, creeping, and time-serving system.

Philip II. of Spain died on the 13th of September, six weeks after Burleigh, in the seventy-first year of his age. A bigot by nature and education, he lived to suppress every sentiment of freedom in religion or politics, and died leaving an empire diminished by the loss of Holland, which rose against his bloody despotism. The failure of his gigantic attempts against the independence of England has made his name a word of scorn in this country; and his unnatural treatment of his son, Don Carlos, has crucified it in execration in every honourable mind the entire world over.

It may afford a clearer idea of the stately and high-spirited Elizabeth if we present her as she showed herself at this period to a German traveller, Hentzner. It was on a Sunday when he was present by a lord-chamberlain's order. The presence-chamber through which the queen commonly passed on her way to chapel, was, he says, hung with rich tapestry and strewn with rushes. "At the door stood a gentleman dressed in velvet with a gold chain, whose office was to introduce to the queen any person of distinction that came to wait on her. In the same hall was the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, a great number of councillors of State, officers of the Crown, and gentlemen, who waited the queen's coming out, which she did from her own apartment when it was time to go to prayers, attended in the following manner. First went gentlemen, barons, earls, knights of the Garter, all richly dressed, and bareheaded; next came the chancellor, bearing the seals in a red silk purse, between two, one of which carried the Royal sceptre, the other the sword of state in a red scabbard studded with fleurs-de-lis, the point upwards. Next came the queen, in the sixty-sixth year of her age, as we were told, very majestic; her face oblong, fair, but wrinkled; her eyes small, jet black, and pleasant; her nose a little hooked; her lips narrow, and her teeth black (a defect the English seem subject to from their too great use of sugar). She had in her ears two pearls with very rich drops; she wore false hair, and that red; upon her head she had a small crown, reported to be made of some of the gold of the celebrated Lunebourg table. Her bosom was uncovered, as all the English ladies have it till they marry; and she had on a necklace of exceeding fine jewels. Her hands were small, her fingers long, and her stature neither tall nor low. Her air was stately, her manner of speaking mild and obliging. That day she was dressed in white silk, bordered with pearls of the size of beans, and over it a mantle of black silk, shot with silver threads. Her train was very long, the end of it borne by a marchioness. Instead of a chain, she had an oblong collar of gold and jewels. As she went along in all this state and magnificence, she spoke very graciously, first to one, then to another, whether foreign ministers, or those who attended for different reasons, in English, French and Italian; for besides being well skilled in Greek, Latin, and the languages I have mentioned, she is mistress of Spanish, Scotch, and Dutch. Whoever speaks to her, it is kneeling; now and then she raises some with her hand. While we were there, W. Slawata, a Bohemian baron, had letters to present to her; and she, after pulling off her glove, gave him her right hand to kiss, sparkling with jewels and rings—a mark of particular favour. Wherever she turned her face as she was going along, everybody fell down on their knees. The ladies of the Court followed next to her, very handsome and well-shaped, and for the most part dressed in white. She was guarded on each side by gentleman pensioners, fifty in number, with gilt battle-axes. In the ante-chapel next the hall where we were, petitions were presented to her, and she received them most graciously, which occasioned the acclamation of 'Long live Queen Elizabeth.' She answered it with, 'I thank you, my good people.'"

As a contrast to this portrait of Elizabeth in her gracious moments, we may present one of her in her lion rages, which were quite as frequent. The King of Poland, the son of her quondam lover, John, Duke of Finland, and afterwards King of Sweden, had sent over an ambassador, whom Elizabeth had received in great state in the presence of the assembled Court at Greenwich; but to her astonishment the ambassador delivered her an unexpected and bold remonstrance against her foreign policy, especially her assumption of dominion on the seas, and her interruptions of the trade of the Spaniards with them, assuring her that he, the King of Poland, had made a league with Austria, and that if she did not desist, they were resolved to use strong means to compel her. Astonished at this unexpected harangue, Elizabeth started up from her seat as the Pole concluded, and addressed him in Latin to the following effect:—"Is this the business that your king has sent you about? Surely, I can hardly believe that if the king himself were present he would have used such language; for if he should, I must have thought that he, being a king not of many years, and that not by right of blood but by right of election, they haply have not informed him of that course