thread of her discourse without the slightest difficulty. She delighted in the conversation of learned travellers and in hearing of the Government customs and discipline of other countries. She enjoyed good music, would sometimes dance herself, and often played chess. Her interest in legal matters was acute, and no book was issued from a printing press but she must first scrutinize it herself.

Elizabeth was acutely sensitive to thought, and during periods of peculiar plotting against her life and her throne, was often subject to violent attacks of illness. Yet she would never consent to take physic. Her scorn of medicine was the despair of her attendants! She also refused to drink wine except at rare intervals and in very small quantities, as she said she did not wish her intellectual senses to be clouded. Often she must have carried a weary and aching body, for she could never have been strong in the accepted sense of the word; but yet, she never failed to present a regal front to her subjects, her faith in the Presence of a Higher Power sustaining her. Alfred Noyes gives us a wonderfully graphic description of her in his great epic poem, "Drake:"

"The song ceased: all was still; and now it seemed
Power brooded on the silence, and Drake saw

A woman come to meet him,-tall and pale
And proud she seemed: behind her head two wings
As of some mighty phantom butterfly

Glimmered with jewel-sparks in the gold gloom.
Her small, pure, grey-eyed face above her ruff
Was chiselled like an agate; and he knew

Drake, under the disguise of piracy, spoiled the great Spanish merchant ships returning from the Pacific laden with South American gold and treasure. These bold

exploits did not, however, prevent the combined force of Rome and Spain from slowly accumulating, with bitter hatred against England, dire preparations for Elizabeth's downfall, preparations which she had been holding at bay with utmost wisdom and watchfulness for thirty long years. Ever since Mary had died, and his influence in England was set at naught, Philip had set greedy eyes upon English soil. He had wooed Elizabeth as a suitor, but failing to gain entrance by peaceable intrigue, he became the willing centre of the plots of Rome for world-dominion, and Rome, with the vast wealth of Spain to draw upon, felt she had now power to strike a death-blow at English liberty, for which she had schemed for centuries.

Pope Sixtus V reiterated the anathema of his predecessors, Pius and Gregory, and proclaimed in addition a crusade of Papal Europe against the heretical Queen of England. The King of Spain gravely charged the Duke Medina that in the forthcoming subjugation of England he should in no wise harm the person of the Queen, but should, as speedily as he might, take order for the conveyance of her person to Rome, to the purpose that His Holiness the Pope should dispose thereof in such sort as it should please him! If Luther burnt the Papal Bull at Wittenberg, Elizabeth as daringly retorted the Papal excommunication by causing the Bishop of London to anathematize the Pope in St. Paul's Cathedral.

She has been accused of duplicity and faithlessness when she tried by all means at her command to avert the catastrophe of open war, and sought to checkmate through every diplomatic avenue, both in Scotland and on the Continent, the evil intents of the one enemy. When at last the Great Armada put out to sea, Elizabeth was at bay, entirely alone without a single ally in the world. But

though thus entirely self-dependent she was resolute, calm, heroic and glorious in her God-reliance. There was no lack of courage or of faith.

It was at this hour of crisis that Queen Elizabeth established the first English newspaper, called The English Mercurie. It was printed by her own printer, Christopher Barker, by authority "for the prevention of false reports. Such a paper was needed, for the air was full of rumours, yet, when the invasion was actually at the gate, the country was welded together as one man. There was no more confusion, no more calling black white and white black. Secret conspiracy was laid bare in the open, and duty was made plain. It was a terrible hour, but a blessed one.

On the 19th of July, 1588, after days of watching through fog and wind, the bold pirate Fleming was able to tell Lord Howard of Effingham, who was Admiral-in-Chief of the little fleet, that the Armada was hovering off the Lizard point. "The next day," says Camden, "the English descried the Spanish ships with lofty turrets like castles in front like a half-moon, the wings thereof spreading out about the length of seven miles, sailing very slowly, though with full sails, the winds being as it were tired with carrying them, and the ocean groaning with their weight." Noyes describes in his epic how the bonfires were lighted on every hill as a sign of danger, and how the nation rose to meet the enemy:

"St Michael's Mount

Answering the first wild beacon far away
Rolled crimson thunders to the stormy sky!
The ropes were knotted. Through the panting dark
Great heaving lines of seamen all together,
Hauled with a shout, and all together again
Hauled with a shout against the roaring wind;
And slowly, slowly, onwards towards the sea

Moved the Revenge and seaward ever heaved
The brawny backs together, and in their midst
Suddenly, as they slackened, Drake was there
Hauling like any ten, and with his heart
Doubling the strength of all, giving them joy
Of battle against those odds. ..

“There as they toiled

Answering a score of hills, old Beachy Head
Streamed like a furnace to the rolling clouds,
Then all around the coast each windy ness

And craggy mountain kindled. Peak from peak
Caught the tremendous fire, and passed it on

Round the bluff East and the black mouth of Thames,—

"Ay Northward to the waste wild Yorkshire fells
And gloomy Cumberland, where like a giant,
Great Skiddaw grasped the red tempestuous brand,
And thrust it up against the reeling heavens.
Then all night long, inland, the wandering winds
Ran wild with clamour and clash of startled bells;
All night the cities seethed with torches, flashed
With twenty thousand flames of burnished steel;
While over the trample and thunder of hooves blazed forth
The lightning of wild trumpets. Lonely lanes

Of country darkness, lit by cottage doors

Entwined with rose and honeysuckle, roared

Like mountain-torrents now.-East, West and South,

As to the coasts with pike and musket streamed

The trained bands, horse and foot, from every town
And every hamlet. All the shaggy hills

From Milford Haven to the Downs of Kent,
And up to Humber, gleamed with many a hedge
Of pikes between the beacon's crimson glares;
While in red London forty thousand men,

In case the invader should prevail, drew swords
Around their Queen. All night in dark St Paul's
While round it rolled a multitudinous roar

As of the Atlantic on a Western beach,

And all the leaning London streets were lit
With fury of torches, rose the passionate prayer
Of England's peril:

O Lord God of Hosts

Let thine enemies know that thou hast taken

England into Thine hands."

Let us repeat the prayer in Elizabeth's own words, for she wrote it and gave it for the whole Church and realm to pray:

"We do instantly beseech Thee of Thy gracious goodness to be merciful to the Church militant here upon earth, and at this time compassed about with most strong and subtle adversaries. O let thine enemies know that thou hast received England, which they most of all for Thy Gospel's sake do malign, into Thine own protection. Set a wall about it, O Lord, and evermore mightily defend it. Let it be a comfort to the afflicted, a help to the oppressed, and a defence to Thy Church and people, persecuted abroad. And, forasmuch as this cause is new in hand, direct and go before our armies both by sea and land. Bless them and prosper them, and grant unto them Thy honourable success and victory. Thou art our help and shield: O give good and prosperous success to all those that fight this battle against the enemies of Thy Gospel."

Noyes goes on to tell how as the

"dawn thro' mist-wreaths broke,

And out of Plymouth Sound at last, with cheers

Ringing from many a thousand throats there struggled

Six little ships, all that the night's long toil

Had warped down to the sea (but leading them
The ships of Drake), there rose one ocean-cry
From all those worshippers: 'Let God arise
And let His enemies be scattered." "