Here lies Queen Elizabeth, who lived and died a maiden queen."

Misfortune threw the Queen of Scots into the power of Elizabeth, and she
was denied those services to which the unfortunate are entitled. Driven
beyond endurance, she openly and bitterly defied her more fortunate
rival, who viewed her with jealousy as heir to the crown, and was
fearful that her beauty and influence might supplant her own popularity.
Mary was kept in prison eighteen years and then executed on the
scaffold. This transaction will ever remain a foul blot on the character
of Elizabeth.

[Illustration: Elizabeth defied by Mary Stuart.]

Neither the cares of government nor the infirmities of approaching age
weaned her from the love of letters, which at every interval of leisure
were her great delight. When nearly sixty years of age, in 1592, she
made a second visit to Oxford, where, having been entertained with
orations, disputations, etc., she pronounced on her departure, a Latin
oration to the vice-chancellors and doctors, when she took her last
farewell of the university. In the ensuing year she translated from
Latin into English, Boethius's "De Consolatione Philosophae." In 1598,
when the disturbances in Ireland occupied a considerable share of her
attention, she translated Sallust's "De bello Jugurthino," also the
greater part of Horace's "De Arte Poetica," and Plutarch's book, "De
Curiositate," all of which were written in her own hand.

But Elizabeth no longer took an interest in public concerns; her sun was
setting, overshadowed by a dark cloud. Prosperity and glory palled upon
her sense; an incurable melancholy had fixed itself on her heart. The
anxiety of her mind made swift ravages upon her feeble frame; the period
of her life visibly approached. The Archbishop of Canterbury advised her
to fix her thoughts on God. She did so, she replied, nor did her mind in
the least wander from Him. Her voice and her senses soon after failing,
she fell into a lethargic slumber, which having continued some hours,
she expired gently, without a struggle, March 24, 1603, in the
seventieth year of her age and the forty-fifth of her reign.

The character of Elizabeth appears to have been exalted by her friends
and depreciated by her enemies, in nearly equal proportions. As a
monarch, her activity and force of mind, her magnanimity, sagacity,
prudence, vigilance, and address, have scarcely been surpassed in royal
annals, and are worthy of the highest adm