basting, feels that now has come his turn for action. How he uses it shall be told in the words of the author of the "New Bath Guide:"

(Thou), with the rapid Lightning's speed,

Drove like a battering ram, thine head

Plump in his paunch: the chief astounded

Back like a culverin rebounded.

Meanwhile of the patriot himself, who, philosopher-like, was never by his enemies confounded, Anstey in conscience could say or sing nothing worse than that—

Your lordship's face appears

Well-worn, but not subdu'd by years.

Features "not subdu'd by years" secured also to Marguerite of Valois at least the continuance of a flattering sobriquet. Her beauty in youth brought her many an admirer from among the princes of the Christian world, and her temperament was such that she willingly allowed herself to be spoken of as a goddess; so that as the old historian Scipion Dupleix says, adding a reason, "elle prit plaisir toute sa vie d'estre nommée Venus Uraine, c'est à dire, celeste: tant pour monstrer qu'elle participoit de la divinité, que pour faire distinguer son amour de celuy du vulgaire." The way in which the distinction was maintained was apparently a stout regard for the maxim, "Voulez-vous cesser d'aimer, possedez la chose aimée "-a circumstance which gives room to our modest historian, after having blamed the royal vanity, to deliver himself of this sentence: "J'en pourrois faire un roman plus excellent et plus admirable que nul qui ait esté composé és siecles precedens mais j'ay des occupations plus serieuses." Could the princess of like name of more than three centuries earlier have attained the fairly mature age of three score and three, would she still have been known as the "Fair Maid of Norway"?

Of all those whom one would have thought exempt from nicknames are in the foremost place Popes. Since the days of SwineSnout Sergius they have in a way given themselves their own nickStill they are not sufficiently distinctive; and an ironical "Restorer of Peace" has accordingly been heard of as a synonym of Leo X., and a misjudging " Ass of La Marca" as one of Sixtus V. before he threw off his disguise, and they have proved patterns for the light wits of later generations. The Popes themselves have, however, found nothing irreconcilable with proper gravity in the occasional bestowal of an appellative, and sometimes a means of further economising the grants has been happily hit upon. It is to make them genealogical. Thus, before the beginning of this century

the Bishops of Capri derived much of their revenue from a tax on the quails that there abounded, and each in succession was consequently known at the Vatican, not by his prelatical title, Vescovo di Capri, but by the sobriquet, Vescovo delle Quaglie-Bishop of Quails.

And all this?-there was something of a suggestion that it was part of history. In what sense? Why, does it show nothing of the varying relation of prince and peasant?-that is of much meaning: does it tell of no facts stamped on the popular mind, offer no explanation of the sources of success, furnish no contrasts between epoch and epoch, suggest nothing of the broad likeness that unites men of different stations, different countries, different times? What than "Perkin" could better express the opinion the Tories had of Monmouth; than "the mad parson" the feeling entertained of Swift by those who saw but did not know the man? "The wicked Earl"

might, indeed, have been in use eight centuries ago, "The Nun of Kenmare" four, "The King of Pantomime two. But "Mull'd Sack" would hardly now be intelligible; "The Witch-Finder" and "The Priest-Catcher" are things surely of the past. And what variety of thought, now pleasant now melancholy, chases through the mind as the lips repeat, "Mephistopheles Sachs," "Bébé," "The Gentleman Highwayman," "Boot - Jack," "The Maypole," "The Temporizing Statesman," "The Golden Farmer," "The Virgin Actress," "The Swiss Melanchthon," "The Lady of the Haystack," "The Grace o' God," "The Beauty of Buttermere," "The Hot Gospeller," "The Irish Chatterton," "The Generous, Honest Man,” "The Devil's Chaplain," "Daft Jamie," "Mother Ross," "The Lily of Lammermoor," "Ned of the Roughs," "Nor Dead nor Victorious," "The Little Magician," "Doctor Sanctus," "Tom Boilman," "Captain Rag," "Vulture Hopkins," "Jupiter Scapin," "Jupiter Carlyle," "John Helferich Juppiter," "Old Mobb," "The Corn-Law Rhymer," "Dirty Dick," "The Last Man." A fit pause. Were Carlyle writing, or were Emerson, how the reader's head would ache; were Emerson or Carlyle, how his heart would burn.

W. H. OLDING.

I1

REJECTED ADDRESSES.

T would be difficult to find in the annals of history the reign of any one sovereign which has afforded more opportunities for the bias of the advocate, the malice of the chronicle-monger, and the enthusiasm of the admirer than that of Elizabeth, Queen of England. Not a single incident in her life, not a letter that she wrote, not a counsel that she gave, not a friend she favoured, not an enemy she persecuted, but has been recorded, commented upon, and perhaps too well remembered. Sober historians have exhausted their industry to prove that she was one of the greatest of women and noblest of rulers; whilst other writers equally sober, and equally devoted to research for its own sake, have come to the conclusion that she was the most overrated of monarchs, a vain and peevish old fribble, and a true daughter of Anne Boleyn-in short, no better than she should be. Men learned in all the subtleties of legal speculation and accustomed to weigh evidence have spent their days in accumulating materials which justify or condemn her conduct with regard to the ill-fated beauty of her time, the bride of Darnley. Economists and lovers of statistics have searched amid musty exchequer documents and household books to inform us what was the annual expenditure of the great queen; how much she spent upon the little side dishes which tickled her somewhat capricious palate, how many wax candles she burnt, how much (not very much) she gave away in charity, what satins and velvets and lace she bought, what frocks she wore, and what was the extent of the imperial wardrobe at the time of her death. Dryasdusts have pored over the notes of forgotten contemporaries to draw up lists of the country houses she visited, the halting-places which arrested her progress, and the memorials of her stay which she planted. We know how and with whom she flirted, whose ears she boxed, what stolen interviews she accorded, what letters she wrote and received; we know all about her vanity, her love of admiration, her trick of incessantly fishing for compliments, her miserable meannesses, and how very sad was the language she often employed when in one of her fits of temper. Nothing about her has been too petty or too

sacred to escape the inquisitiveness of modern research. And now a distinguished foreign man of letters comes upon the scene to tell a thrice-told tale of the projects which were set on foot by that miserable creature the queen-mother of France, to tempt the warm yet self-contained daughter of bluff King Hal into marriage.'

It cannot be said that Count de la Ferrière has added much new matter to that already possessed by the historical student. When a field has been well gleaned by early arrivals there is seldom much left for a late comer. After the issue of the volumes of State papers edited by the officials of the Record Office, the investigations of Mr. Froude, and the publication of the transcripts of various archives made by foreign Governments, it is scarcely possible for any recent writer upon the reign of Elizabeth to furnish us with many important discoveries. M. de la Ferrière has, however, done a useful work in bringing together in a small portable volume materials not easily accessible to the ordinary reader, touching a very interesting negotiation in our domestic history; and though his researches among original manuscripts have not been rewarded with the deserts his industry should command, he has still been able to throw here and there some new light upon the question which has engaged his labours.

During the earlier years of Elizabeth upon the throne no subject more exercised the mind of the advisers of the Crown than that of the succession. If the Queen would but marry, and, in the ordinary course of things, present the nation with an heir, all would be well; the pretensions of Mary Stuart would no longer be dangerous, and the intrigues of the Catholics would no longer have any basis to work upon. Yet Elizabeth, often wooed, often on the eve of consenting, refused to pledge herself irrevocably, and made every suitor who aspired after her hand the laughing-stock of the boudoirs and embassies of Europe. Passionately fond of admiration, she would lure a man on by smiles and promises to declare his intentions, and then would dismiss him coldly and harshly-only a few weeks afterwards perhaps to reopen negotiations, and raise the falsest of hopes once more in the breast of her confused lover. Yet with the exactingness of the finished coquette, who demands everything but will concede nothing, she considered every man upon whom she had once smiled as her own exclusive property; as one to whom every other woman must be as nought-did she not forbid the brilliant young Oxford after his marriage to have anything to do with

Lévy.

Les Projets de Mariage de la Reine Elisabeth, par H. de la Ferrière. Calmann
Paris. 1882.

his pretty wife?—and who must ever follow in her train. Why then did she refuse to marry any of the gallants who hovered about her court, and who would have been only too ready to obey her wishes? Her answer was that she would never link her fate with one of her subjects. She might flirt with the weak Arundel, or the stately Pickering, or the graceful Hatton, or handsome young Tremaine, or the fascinating Leicester, or the bold Essex, but she knew too well what was due to the dignity of the crown she wore to raise either of them to share her throne. This excuse might suffice if the aspirers after her hand were only to be found among her own subjects; but men of royal blood, who could boast a pedigree to which no Tudor could ever pretend, men who were sovereigns in their own right, men who were the heirs-apparent to distinguished crowns, were also among the rejected, and fared no better than their humbler rivals. Why did she refuse these, the most eligible of all offers? The foreign suitors who came over to England to woo the fickle daughter of Anne Boleyn formed a goodly band, and the story of their rejected addresses is scarcely so well known as not to bear repetition.

The names of the more illustrious partis who head the list can soon be dismissed. The prayers of the Duke of Savoy, Elizabeth, when a young girl, speedily silenced, and declined to be persuaded into altering her mind. She refused Philip the Second since her conscience would not permit her, she declared, to marry her brotherin-law. A deliberation, which lasted but eight days, was sufficient to dismiss the proposals of the Kings of Sweden and Denmark. Year after year she encouraged the hopes of the poor Archduke Charles, son of the Emperor Ferdinand; and then, tired of her slave, gave him his congé, and thought no more about him. Matters were perhaps a little more serious with the fascinating Duke de Nemours. Elizabeth admired his portrait, took it out of its case in public, lovingly gazing upon it, and then openly said to the Duke's envoy that she should much like to see the original; and the original, flattered at the request for who was a greater catch in Europe than this susceptible spinster?-made his preparation to cross the Channel, filled his wardrobe with the most gorgeous of cloaks and doublets, and commanded a splendid retinue to attend upon his steps; but at the last moment the voyage was abandoned, for the fickle gallant was fascinated elsewhere: "autres amours," says Brantôme, “serroient le cœur du duc et le tenoient captif." After these failures Catherine de Medicis, the infernal queen-mother of France, now resolved to employ her arts, and see if the wealthy crown of England could not fall into the lap of one of her children. Her eldest son, Charles the