queen who seemed to be the prey of boundless vanity;
and, lastly, a woman who had all a woman's passion, and who could cast
suddenly aside the check and balance which restrained her before the
public gaze and could allow herself to give full play to the emotion
that she inherited from the king, her father, who was himself a marvel
of fire and impetuosity. That the daughter of Henry VIII. and Anne
Boleyn should be a gentle, timid maiden would be to make heredity a
farce.

Elizabeth was about twenty-five years of age when she ascended the
throne of England. It is odd that the date of her birth cannot be given
with precision. The intrigues and disturbances of the English court,
and the fact that she was a princess, made her birth a matter of less
account than if there had been no male heir to the throne. At any rate,
when she ascended it, after the deaths of her brother, King Edward
VI., and her sister, Queen Mary, she was a woman well trained both in
intellect and in physical development.

Mr. Martin Hume, who loves to dwell upon the later years of Queen
Elizabeth, speaks rather bitterly of her as a "painted old harridan";
and such she may well have seemed when, at nearly seventy years of age,
she leered and grinned a sort of skeleton smile at the handsome young
courtiers who pretended to see in her the queen of beauty and to be
dying for love of her.

Yet, in her earlier years, when she was young and strong and impetuous,
she deserved far different words than these. The portrait of her by
Zucchero, which now hangs in Hampton Court, depicts her when she must
have been of more than middle age; and still the face is one of beauty,
though it be a strange and almost artificial beauty--one that draws,
attracts, and, perhaps, lures you on against your will.

It is interesting to compare this painting with the frank word-picture
of a certain German agent who was sent to England by his emperor, and
who seems to have been greatly fascinated by Queen Elizabeth. She was at
that time in the prime of her beauty and her power. Her complexion was
of that peculiar transparency which is seen only in the face of golden
blondes. Her figure was fine and graceful, and her wit an accomplishment
that would have made a woman of any rank or time remarkable. The German
envoy says:

She lives a life of such magnificence and feasting as can hardly be
imagined, and occupies a great portion of her time with balls, banquets,
hunting, and similar