re Spenser and
Shakspeare. As the latter has been truly characterized as not for an age,
but for all time, the former may be more justly considered as the highest
exponent and representative of that period. The Faerie Queene, considered
only as a grand heroic poem, is unrivalled in its pictures of beautiful
women, brave men, daring deeds, and Oriental splendor; but in its
allegorical character, it is far more instructive, since it enumerates and
illustrates the cardinal virtues which should make up the moral character
of a gentleman: add to this, that it is teeming with history, and in its
manifold completeness we have, if not an oasis in the desert, more truly
the rich verge of the fertile country which bounds that desert, and which
opens a more beautiful road to the literary traveller as he comes down the
great highway: wearied and worn with the factions and barrenness of the
fifteenth century, he fairly revels with delight in the fertility and
variety of the Elizabethan age.

EDWARD AND MARY.--In pursuance of our plan, a few preliminary words will
present the historic features of that age. In the year 1547, Henry VIII.,
the royal Bluebeard, sank, full of crimes and beset with deathbed horrors,
into a dishonorable grave.[24] A poor, weak youth, his son, Edward VI.,
seemed sent by special providence on a short mission of six years, to
foster the reformed faith, and to give the land a brief rest after the
disorders and crimes of his father's reign.

After Edward came Queen Mary, in 1553--the bloody Mary, who violently
overturned the Protestant system, and avenged her mother against her
father by restoring the Papal sway and making heresy the unpardonable
sin. It may seem strange, in one breath to denounce Henry and to defend
his daughter Mary; but severe justice, untempered with sympathy, has been
meted out to her. We acknowledge all her recorded actions, but let it be
remembered that she was the child of a basely repudiated mother, Catherine
of Arragon, who, as the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, was a
Catholic of the Catholics. Mary had been declared illegitimate; she was
laboring under an incurable disease, affecting her mind as well as her
body; she was the wife of Philip II. of Spain, a monster of iniquity,
whose sole virtue--if we may so speak--was his devotion to his Church. She
inherited her bigotry from her mother, and strengthened it by her
marriage; and she thought that in persecuting heretics