nteen when her
hateful old father died; and during the six years when the government
was in the hands of Somerset, Edward VI. being a minor, Elizabeth was
exposed to no peculiar perils except those of the heart. It is said that
Sir Thomas Seymour, brother to the Protector, made a strong impression
on her, and that she would have married him had the Council consented.
By nature, Elizabeth was affectionate, though prudent. Her love for
Seymour was uncalculating and unselfish, though he was unworthy of it.
Indeed, it was her misfortune always to misplace her affections,--which
is so often the case in the marriages of superior women, as if they
loved the image merely which their own minds created, as Dante did when
he bowed down to Beatrice. When we see intellectual men choosing weak
and silly women for wives, and women of exalted character selecting
unworthy and wicked husbands, it does seem as if Providence determines
all matrimonial unions independently of our own wills and settled
purposes. How often is wealth wedded to poverty, beauty to ugliness, and
amiability to ill-temper! The hard, cold, unsocial, unsympathetic,
wooden, scheming, selfish man is the only one who seems to attain his
end, since he can bide his time,--wait for somebody to fancy him.

Elizabeth had that mixed character which made her life a perpetual
conflict between her inclinations and her interests. Her generous
impulses and affectionate nature made her peculiarly susceptible, while
her prudence and her pride kept her from a foolish marriage. She may
have loved unwisely, but she had sufficient self-control to prevent a
mesalliance. While she may have resigned herself at times to the
fascinations of accomplished men, she yet fathomed the abyss into which
imprudence would bury her forever.

On the accession of Mary, her elder sister, daughter of Catharine of
Aragon, Elizabeth's position was exceedingly critical, exposed as she
was to the intrigues of the Catholics and the jealousy of the Queen. And
when we remember that the great question and issue of that age was
whether the Catholic or Protestant religion should have the ascendency,
and that this ascendency seemed to hinge upon the private inclinations
of the sovereign who in the furtherance of this great end would scruple
at nothing to accomplish it, and that the greatest crimes committed for
its sake would be justified by all the sophistries that religious
partisanship could furnish, and be uphel