count me the greatest ---- of your three kingdoms."

During all this flattery with which the favourite charmed the ears of
the good Queen, the poet Sydney, pencil in hand, was sketching the
vision of the Fair Rosamond.

Her Majesty then commanded it should be read, and when she heard it,
pronounced it very clever: but as it was a real impromptu, not one of
those born long before, and was written for a particular audience, as a
picture is painted for a particular light--we think it but justice to
the celebrated author not to draw his lines from the venerable antiquity
in which they rest, even if we had the MSS. copy; but we have not--which
at once finishes the business.

After the reading, they deliberated on the next that should succeed
Rosamond. The enchanter, still of opinion that they need not leave
England when beauty was the object in question, proposed the famous
Countess of Salisbury, who gave rise to the institution of the Garter.
The idea was approved of by the Queen, and particularly agreeable to
the courtiers, as they wished to see if the _cause_ were worthy of the
effect,--_i.e._, the leg of the garter; but her Majesty declared that
she should particularly like a second sight of her lovely resemblance,
the Fair Rosamond. The Doctor vowed that the affair was next to
impracticable in the order of conjuration,--the recall of a phantom not
depending on the powers submitted to the first enchantments. But the
more he declared against it, the more the Queen insisted, until he was
obliged at last to submit, but with the information that, if Rosamond
should return, it would not be by the way in which she had entered or
retired already, and that they had best take care of themselves, as he
could answer for no one.

The Queen, as we have elsewhere observed, knew not what fear was--and
the two courtiers were now a little reassured on the subject of
apparitions. The Doctor then set about accomplishing the Queen's wishes.
Never had conjuration cost him so much trouble; and after a thousand
grimaces and contortions, neither pretty nor polite, he flung his book
into the middle of the gallery, went three times round it on his hands
and feet, then made the tree against the wall, head down and heels up;
but nothing appearing, he had recourse to the last and most powerful of
his spells. What that was must remain for ever a mystery, for certain
reasons; but he wound it up by three times summoning with a sonorous
voice--"Ro