it. The pleasure its use can afford is immense. I have many correspondents who say that the delight of recalling beautiful scenery and great works of art is the highest that they know. Our bookish education tends unduly to repress this valuable gift of nature. A faculty that is of importance in all technical and artistic occupations, that gives accuracy to our perceptions, and justness to our generalizations, is starved by disuse, instead of being cultivated in the way that will bring most return. I believe that a serious study of the best method of developing the faculty of visualizing is one of the many pressing desiderata in the new science of education. FRANCIS GALTON, in The Fortnightly Review.

THE YOUTH OF QUEEN BESS.

THE bright hopes that youth often inspires are seldom realized; what we mistake for intelligence turns out to be precocity, the brilliant pupil becomes in after life a dullard, and the fruit that was so early ripe falls from the bough tasteless. The child may be father of the man, but how often do we find nothing in the child afterwards justified by the man, and nothing in the man to remind us of the child. The promise of youth is the ficklest of all guides. The boy who was head of the school and whose university career was distinguished, when he enters upon his profession and pits -himself against his fellows in the arena of life, often fails to make the mark expected of him. On the other hand, he who was deemed dull in his youth like Goldsmith, or who was well-nigh plucked for his degree like Swift, may develop in after-life into a name that his country ever fondly remembers.

Biographers love to tell us that the men who attained to distinction displayed even in the days of their youth signs of the great talents which were afterwards to raise them to the highest places in the temple of Fame; yet it would be as easy to give the reverse of the picture, and to show those who, though lightly considered in their youth, were subsequently enrolled among the greatest of a nation's celebrities. One name, which Englishmen will always remember with pride, however, fully justified the early promise it held out. The Elizabeth of Hatfield, immersed in her classical studies, chatting with ease to her visitors in different languages, and delighting the heart of her old tutor by the excellence of her attainments, was undoubtedly the precursor of the wise, fearless woman who gave liberty of worship to the Protestants, who freed Europe from the terror of a general submission to Spain, and who presided over the councils directed by Cecil and Walsingham. The girlhood of the future Queen had been passed

amid severe trials; yet the deep information she had drunk from her books and the mortifications she had been called upon to endure, were the means of endowing her with a stability of character, and with a practical experience, which were of the greatest service when she came to wear the crown.

66

The daughter of a woman sentenced to death for the crime of adultery, disliked by her father and branded with the stigma of illegitimacy, the early years of Elizabeth were spent in neglect and obscurity. Her governess, Lady Margaret Brian, thus writes to Cromwell of the condition of the unhappy girl in whose veins ran royal blood, and who was one day to be the sovereign of a mighty people. 'She hath neither gown nor kirtle, nor petticoat, nor no manner of linen for smocks, nor kerchiefs, nor sleeves, nor rails, nor body-stitchets, nor handkerchiefs, nor mufflers, nor biggins. All these her Grace must take. I have driven off as long as can, but by my troth I can drive it no longer." Motherless and worse than fatherless, the atmosphere of the Court, with its coarse jests, its open amours, and its general profligacy of tone, was no fitting home for little Bess. Hunston was assigned for her residence, and here she was brought up in fond companionship with her sister Mary. The two young girls had much in common to increase the natural affection which they then entertained towards each other; both were the daughters of women disliked by their lord, both were out of favor with their father, both had been declared illegitimate, and both were absorbed by their studies. "So pregnant and ingenious were either," says Haywood, that they desired to look upon books as soon as the day began to break. The hora matutina were so welcome that they seemed to prevent the night's sleeping for the entertainment of the morrow's schooling." And this was the mode of their "schooling." Their first hours were spent in prayers and other religious exercises, in reading the Old Testament and listening to some exposition on a text in the New. The rest of the morning they were instructed either in language or in some of the liberal sciences, or moral learning, or other subject "collected out of such authors as did best conduce to the instruction of princes." Study over, they amused themselves with lute or viol, and, wearied with that, practiced their needle. "This," says the old chronicler, "was the circular course of their employment; God was the center of all their actions." We read that Elizabeth, when six years old, presented to her brother Prince Edward "a shirt of cambric as a New Year's gift," and upon the same festival a year later, "a braser of needlework," both of which are described as her own making.

66

Both the young princesses were brought up in the religion of their father. Though our eighth Henry had sanctioned the Reformation, he was a rigid Catholic, with the one exception of claiming the supremacy in things ecclesiastical, and adhered to the old

creed with all the fervor of the most bigoted Papist. To use the words of a Protestant who lived in those evil days, and who did not approve of the lax views of bluff King Hal," though the whore of Babylon is fallen in England already, yet her trish-trash remained for the iniquities of the people. God, through the King, had cast the devil out of this realm, yet both he and we sup of the broth in which the devil was sodden." Maintaining these views, it was not probable that the father would allow his children to profess any religion but that which he himself followed. Though holding very different opinions in after-life the one from the other, the two sisters at this period were both devout Catholics, and most diligent in all the duties taught by Rome. It was not until Elizabeth had reached the age of fourteen, and her brother Edward had ascended the throne, that a change took place in the religious teaching of Elizabeth. It had been decided, by the ruling body to whom the government of the realm was intrusted, that the young king should be educated in the principles of the Reformation. Mary, firm then as she always was in her devotion to the Catholic Church, declined to cast in her lot with those of the new faith, and withdrew from the Court. Elizabeth, deeply attached to her brother, refused to be parted from him, and accordingly was allowed to enter upon the same course of moral and intellectual training as the boy-king. Subject to the instruction of the two most accomplished scholars of their time, Dr. Coxe and Sir John Cheke, Elizabeth enjoyed the education common to the sterner sex as well as that which was more especially suitable to her own. She not only could read Cicero and Aristotle with ease, but she could talk fluently in French and Italian.

At a very early age she had proved herself no mean French scholar-especially when we bear in mind that Continental languages were at that time seldom studied in England. Among the many precious books in the British Museum, there is a rare little volume entitled "A godly medytacyon of the Christian soule concerning a love towards God and Hys Christe, compyled in Frenche by Lady Margarete, Quene of Naver, and aptely translated into Englysh by the ryght vertuouse Lady Elyzabeth, daughtir of our late Soverayne Kynge Henri the VIII.' The translation, it is said, is far from perfect; but that a girl of twelve should have been capable of translating such a work at all is most commendable. Elizabeth, in a letter we have to Catharine Parr, admits that her work is "all imperfect and incorrect," and that having "joined the sentences together, as well as the capacity of her simple wit and small learning could extend themselves, she knows it in many places to be rude, and nothing done as it should be."

For reasons which it seems difficult to understand, Elizabeth was, shortly after this arrangement had been entered into, removed from the companionship of her brother. Mary was residing at

Newhall, in Essex, and it had been rightly held by the council that the interviews between herself and Edward should only occasionally take place. The boy-king was being educated in the rigid principles of Calvanism, and it was deemed unwise that those principles should in any way be shaken or interfered with by the Catholic arguments of the bigoted Mary. Already the influences of the elder sister had been noticed as dangerous to the Protestantism of Edward.

"When the Lady Mary, her sister," writes the Countess of Feria, "who ever kept her house in very Catholic manner and order, came to visit the king, her brother, he took special content in her company (I have heard it from an eyewitness), would ask her many questions, promise her secresy, carrying her that respect and reverence as if she had been his mother; and she again, in her discretion, advised him in something that concerned himself this noted by her tutors, order was taken that these visits should be very rare, alleging that they made the king sad and melancholy."

During the last three years of his life, Edward saw his sister only three times. That he should have been separated from Mary is easily to be understood, but why should he have been separated from Elizabeth? She had been his fellow-pupil, she professed the Protestant faith, there had been nothing in her opinions to render her an unfit companion for her brother, why then should she have been removed from him? We know not. Her separation being decided upon, and she was too young to have the command of an establishment of her own, she was placed under the charge of Catharine Parr, the Queen Dowager. She had better have remained learning her lessons with her brother.

Elizabeth, had she lived in these days, would never have been enrolled as a professional beauty, but she had several good points about her which would have been attractive in any woman, and which were of course doubly attractive in a princess. Her eyes were expressive, her complexion was exquisitely fair, her hair was luxuriant, and her budding figure gave promise of much grace and majesty. She had now arrived at that susceptible age when the heart, controlled by no experience, and oblivious of all social considerations, pants for sympathy and affection; the age when school boys write sonnets to the baker's daughter, and schoolgirls worship an ancient drawing-master. The Queen Dowager had soon been consoled for the loss of her husband; scarcely had a few weeks elapsed since Henry breathed his last, than she united herself to the handsome brother of the Duke of Somerset, the proud and ambitious Lord Admiral. On her removal from her brother, Elizabeth went to live, as we have said, with the Queen Dowager, and consequently had to pass much of her time in the pleasant society of the admiral. To this companionship the young princess was far from averse. If we are to credit the evidence of her waiting-woman, she appears, during this period, to have had an appreciation of the opposite sex

which shows that she was a true daughter of Anne Boleyn, however much her paternity might have been disputed. Lady Somerset, we read, found great faith in consequence of “ my Lady Elizabeth going in a barge upon Thames, and for other light parts;" while Catherine Parr said that upon one occasion her husband "looked in at the gallery window and saw my Lady Elizabeth cast her arms about a man's neck." The Admiral was, however, the last to throw the stone at the Princess, for there had passed between him and the young girl placed under his roof familiarities, perhaps innocent, but capable of the gravest misconstruction. Let us give heed to the evidence of Katherine Ashley, the governess of Elizabeth :

"At Chelsea the Admiral would come many mornings into the Lady Elizabeth's chamber before she was ready, and sometimes before she did rise. And if she were up, he would bid her good morrow, and ask her how she did, or strike her upon the back and so go forth through his lodgings. And if she were in her bed he would open the curtains and bid her good morrow, and make as though he would come at her. . . . At Seymour Place, when the Queen lay there, he did use a while to come up every morning in his night-gown, barelegged, in his slippers, where he found, commonly, the Lady Elizabeth at her book. And then he would look in at the gallery door and bid my Lady Elizabeth good morrow, and go his way."

As became one intrusted not only with the education, but with the morals of her pupil, Mrs. Ashley told my lord it was an unseemly sight to come so bare-legged to a maiden's chamber; with which he was angry, but he left it." From the State Papers we learn a little more concerning this very delicate matter.

"As touching my Lord's boldness in the Lady Elizabeth's chamber (the Lord I take to record)," writes the governess, "I spoke so cut to him, yea, and said that it was complained on to my Lord of the Council, yet he would swear, What do I? I would that all saw it. And I could not make him leave it. At last I told the Queen of it, who made a small matter of it to me, and said she would come with him herself. And so she did ever after."

In spite of the Queen making "a small matter of it," Mrs. Ashley told one Parry, an attendant of the Lady Elizabeth, that

"The Admiral loved but the Princess too well, and had done so a good while; and that the Queen was jealous of her and him, insomuch that one time the Queen, suspecting the often access of the Admiral to the Lady Elizabeth, came suddenly upon them when they were both alone, he having her in his arms, wherefore the Queen fell out both with the Lord Admiral and with her Grace also."

Indeed matters had now arrived at such a pass that the indignant wife insisted upon the removal of Elizabeth from her household, and that there should be no more cause for offense. For the sake both of the Princess and the Admiral, the scandal was kept a profound secret. Though separated, the Queen Dowager wrote to Elizabeth, and the Admiral was allowed to add a word, so that it