n of another
courtier, that it was like the last rays of the declining sun. Ill-natured
persons called it red.

SIR ARTEGAL, OR JUSTICE.--As has been already said, Artegal, or Justice,
makes conquest of Britomartis or Elizabeth. It is no earthly love that
follows, but the declaration of the queen that in her continued maidenhood
justice to her people shall be her only spouse. Such, whatever the honest
historian may think, was the poet's conceit of what would best please his
royal mistress.

It has been already stated that by Gloriana, the Faerie Queene, the poet
intended the person of Elizabeth in her regnant grandeur: Britomartis
represents her chastity. Not content with these impersonations, Spenser
introduces a third: it is Belphoebe, the abstraction of virginity; a
character for which, however, he designs a dual interpretation. Belphoebe
is also another representation of the Church; in describing her he rises
to great splendor of language:

... her birth was of the morning dew,
And her conception of the glorious prime.

We recur, as we read, to the grandeur of the Psalmist's words, as he
speaks of the coming of her Lord: "In the day of thy power shall the
people offer thee free-will offerings with a holy worship; the dew of thy
birth is of the womb of the morning."

ELIZABETH.--In the fifth book a great number of the statistics of
contemporary history are found. A cruel sultan, urged on by an abandoned
sultana, is Philip with the Spanish Church. Mercilla, a queen pursued by
the sultan and his wife, is another name for Elizabeth, for he tells us
she was

... a maiden queen of high renown;
For her great bounty knowen over all.

Artegal, assuming the armor of a pagan knight, represents justice in the
person of Solyman the Magnificent, making war against Philip of Spain. In
the ninth canto of the sixth book, the court of Elizabeth is portrayed; in
the tenth and eleventh, the war in Flanders--so brilliantly described in
Mr. Motley's history. The Lady Belge is the United Netherlands; Gerioneo,
the oppressor, is the Duke of Alva; the Inquisition appears as a horrid
but nameless monster, and minor personages occur to complete the historic
pictures.

The adventure of Sir Artegal in succor of the Lady Irena, (Erin,)
represents the proceedings of Elizabeth in Ireland, in enforcing the
Reformation, abrogating the establishments of her sister Mary, and thus
inducing Tyrone's rebellion, with the con