ration,
those tragical distresses which fancy has feigned, to excite sorrow and
commiseration; and while we survey them, we are apt altogether to forget
her frailties; we think of her faults with less indignation, and approve
of our tears as if they were shed for a person who had attained much
nearer to pure virtue. With regard to the queen's person, all
contemporary authors agree in ascribing to Mary the utmost beauty of
countenance, and elegance of shape, of which the human form is capable.
Her hair was black, though, according to the fashion of that age, she
frequently borrowed locks, and of different colours. Her eyes were a
dark grey; her complexion was exquisitely fine, and her hands and arms
remarkably delicate, both as to shape and colour. Her stature was of an
height that rose to the majestic. She danced, she walked, and she rode
with equal grace. She sung, and played upon the lute with uncommon
skill."

[69] I will merely give this brief extract as one out of many of great
force and beauty, from his _Salmonia_:--"If we look with wonder upon the
great remains of human works, such as the columns of Palmyra, broken in
the midst of the desert, the temples of Paestum, beautiful in the decay
of twenty centuries, or the mutilated fragments of Greek sculpture in
the Acropolis of Athens, or in our own Museum, as proofs of the genius
of artists, and power and riches of nations now past away, with how much
deeper feeling of admiration must we consider those grand monuments of
nature, which mark the revolutions of the globe; continents broken into
islands; one land produced, another destroyed; the bottom of the ocean
become a fertile soil; whole races of animals extinct; and the bones and
exuviae of one class covered with the remains of another, and upon the
graves of past generations--the marble or rocky tomb, as it were, of a
former animated world--new generations rising, and order and harmony
established, and a system of life and beauty produced, as it were, out
of chaos and death; proving the infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, of
the GREAT CAUSE OF ALL BEING!" I must trespass on my reader, by again
quoting from _Salmonia_:--"I envy no quality of the mind or intellect in
others; not genius, power, wit, or fancy; but if I could choose what
would be most delightful, and I believe most useful to me, I should
prefer _a firm religious belief_ to every other blessing; for it makes
life a discipline of goodness--creates ne