3. Her passion for Darnley was rash, youthful, and excessive. And though the sudden transition to the opposite extreme was the natural effect of her ill-requited love, and of his ingratitude, insolence, and brutality, yet neither these nor Bothwell's artful address and important services can justify her attachment to that nobleman. Even the manners of the age, licentious as they were, are no apology for this unhappy passion; nor can they induce us to look on that tragical and infamous scene1 which followed upon it, with less abhorrence. 4. Humanity will draw a veil over this part of her character, which it cannot approve; and may, perhaps, prompt some to impute her actions to her situation more than to her disposition, and to lament the unhappiness of the former, rather than accuse the 'perverseness of the latter. Mary's sufferings exceed, both in degree and in duration, those tragical distresses which fancy has figured to excite sorrow and commiseration; and while we survey them, we are apt altogether to forget her 'frailties; we think of her faults with less indignation, and approve of our tears as if they were shed for a person who had attained much nearer to pure virtue. 5. With regard to the queen's person, a circumstance not to be omitted in writing the history of a female reign, all contemporary authors agree in ascribing to Mary the utmost beauty of countenance and elegance of shape of which the human form is capable. Her hair was black, though, according to the fashion of that age, she frequently wore borrowed locks, and of different colours. Her eyes were of dark gray, her complexion was 'exquisitely fine, and her hands and arms remarkably delicate, both as to shape and colour. 6. Her stature was of a height that rose to the majestic. She danced, she walked, and rode with equal grace. Her taste for music was just, and she both sung and played upon the lute with uncommon skill. Toward the end of her life she began to grow fat; and her long confinement, and the coldness of the houses in which she had been imprisoned, brought on a 'rheumatism which deprived her of the use of her limbs. "No man," says Brantome, ever beheld her person without admiration and love, or will read her history without sorrow. WILLIAM ROBERTSON: History of Scotland. ab-hor-rence, great hatred. time. dis-crě-tion, prudence. ing. 1 Tragical and infamous scene, the murder of Darnley, contrived by Bothwell, and approved by Mary, followed as it was by her marriage with frail-ties, weaknesses. per-fid-i-ous, false-hearted; faithless. the murderer. The house at Edinburgh 4. THE EXPLOITS OF DRAKE. 1587 A.D. [At the time referred to, it was well known that Philip of Spain was making great preparations for the invasion of England. Drake's object was to inflict damage on the enemy, and to retard his operations as much as possible. Drake was a Devonshire man, having been born at Tavistock in 1545. On his return from a voyage round the world in 1580, he was knighted by Elizabeth. ploit of 1587 he described as "singeing the Spanish monarch's beard." following year he commanded as vice-admiral under Lord Howard, and helped to defeat the Armada. He died in an American port in 1596.] His exIn the 1. On the 2nd April, Francis Drake sailed from Plymouth with four ships belonging to the Queen, and with twenty-four furnished by the merchants of London and other private individuals. It was a bold 'buccaneering expedition combining chivalrous enterprise with the chance of enormous profit-which was most suited to the character of English adventurers at that expanding epoch. 2. For it was by England, not by Elizabeth, that the quarrel with Spain was felt to be a mortal one. It was England, not its sovereign, that was 'instinctively arming, at all points, to grapple with the great enemy of European liberty. It was the spirit of self-help, of self-reliance, which was prompting the English nation to take the great work of the age into its own hands. 3. "The wind commands me away," said Drake, on the 2nd April 1587; "our ship is under sail. God grant that we may so live in his fear that the enemy may have cause to say that God doth fight for her Majesty abroad as well as at home!" 4. In latitude 40° he spoke two Zeeland ships,1 homeward bound, and obtained information of great warlike stores accumulating in Cadiz2 and Lisbon.3 His mind was instantly made up. Fortunately, the pinnace which the Queen despatched with orders to stay his hand in the very act of smiting her great adversary, did not sail fast enough to overtake the swift corsair and his fleet. Sir Francis had too promptly obeyed the wind when it "commanded him away," to receive the royal countermand. 5. On the 19th April, the English ships entered the harbour of Cadiz and destroyed ten thousand tons of shipping, with their contents, in the very face of a dozen great galleys, which the nimble English vessels soon drove under their forts for shelter. Two nights and a day Sir Francis, that "hater of idleness," was steadily doing his work— unloading, rifling, scuttling, sinking, and burning those transport ships which contained a portion of the preparations painfully made by Philip for his great enterprise.1 6. Pipe-staves and spikes, horse-shoes and saddles, timber and cutlasses, wine, oil, figs, raisins, biscuits, and flour, a 'miscellaneous mass of 'ingredients, long brewing for the trouble of England, were emptied into the harbour; and before the second night the blaze of a hundred and fifty (632) 9 burning vessels played merrily upon the grim walls of Philip's fortresses. Some of these ships were of the largest size then known. There was one belonging to Marquis Santa Cruz, of 1500 tons; there was a Biscayan of 1200; there were several others of 1000, 800, and of nearly equal dimensions. 7. At Lisbon, Marquis Santa Cruz, Lord High Admiral of Spain, and Generalissimo of the invasion, looked on mortified and amazed, but offered no combat, while the Plymouth privateersman swept the harbour of the greatest monarch of the world. After thoroughly accomplishing his work, Drake sent a message to Santa Cruz, proposing to exchange his prisoners for such Englishmen as might then be confined in Spain. But the marquis denied all prisoners. Thereupon Sir Francis decided to sell his captives to the Moors, and to appropriate the proceeds of the sale towards the purchase of English slaves out of the same bondage. Such was the fortune of war in the sixteenth century. 8. Having dealt these great blows, Drake set sail again from Lisbon, and, twenty leagues from St. Michael,5 fell in with one of those Spanish East Indiamen called caracks, then the great wonder of the seas. This vessel, San Felipe by name, with a cargo of 'extraordinary value, was easily captured, and Sir Francis now determined to return. He had done a good piece of work in a few weeks, but he was by no means of opinion that he had materially crippled the enemy. On the contrary, he gave the government warning as to the enormous power and vast preparations of Spain. "There would be forty thousand men under way ere long," he said, "well equipped and provisioned ;" and he stated, as the result of personal observation, that England could not be too energetic in its measures of resistance. 9. Perhaps the most precious result of the expedition was the lesson which the Englishmen had thus learned in handling the great galleys of Spain. It might soon stand them in stead. The little war-vessels which had come from Plymouth had sailed round and round these vast 'unwieldy hulks, and had fairly driven them off the field, with very slight damage to themselves. Sir Francis had already taught the mariners of England, even if he had done nothing else by this famous Cadiz expedition, that an armada of Spain might not be so invincible as men imagined. J. L. MOTLEY: History of the United Netherlands. fur-nished, supplied. in-gre-di-ents, compounds; elements. scut-tling, cutting holes in ships. 4 His great enterprise, the invasion of England. 5 St. Michael, the largest of the 2 Ca'diz, a commercial town on the Azores, islands in the Atlantic belongsouth-west coast of Spain. 3 Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, with a splendid natural harbour at the mouth of the Tagus. ing to Portugal. "Twenty leagues" is 60 miles, a league being 3 miles. 6 Car'acks, large merchant ships, used by the Spaniards. 5. THE SPANISH ARMADA. 1588 A.D. [The object of Philip of Spain, in sending the Armada against England, was to inflict a death-blow on Protestantism in Europe, and to restore the authority of the Pope in England. The expedition had been many months in preparation. It had started several times, and had been driven back by storms and accidents of various kinds. Its first commander, the Marquis of Santa Cruz, had died, and it was now placed under the charge of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, a man of no skill in seamanship. The land forces, and indeed the whole expedition, were under the command of Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, then in the Netherlands.] 1. At last, on the 28th, 29th, and 30th May, 1588, the fleet, which had been waiting at Lisbon more than a month for favourable weather, set sail from that port, after hav |