ses that appeared
to be half starved. Among the people who were not disposed to love her,
she found the powerful leaders of the Reformed Church, who were bitter
upon her amusements, however innocent, and denounced music and dancing as
works of the devil. John Knox himself often lectured her, violently and
angrily, and did much to make her life unhappy. All these reasons
confirmed her old attachment to the Romish religion, and caused her,
there is no doubt, most imprudently and dangerously both for herself and
for England too, to give a solemn pledge to the heads of the Romish
Church that if she ever succeeded to the English crown, she would set up
that religion again. In reading her unhappy history, you must always
remember this; and also that during her whole life she was constantly put
forward against the Queen, in some form or other, by the Romish party.

That Elizabeth, on the other hand, was not inclined to like her, is
pretty certain. Elizabeth was very vain and jealous, and had an
extraordinary dislike to people being married. She treated Lady
Catherine Grey, sister of the beheaded Lady Jane, with such shameful
severity, for no other reason than her being secretly married, that she
died and her husband was ruined; so, when a second marriage for Mary
began to be talked about, probably Elizabeth disliked her more. Not that
Elizabeth wanted suitors of her own, for they started up from Spain,
Austria, Sweden, and England. Her English lover at this time, and one
whom she much favoured too, was LORD ROBERT DUDLEY, Earl of
Leicester--himself secretly married to AMY ROBSART, the daughter of an
English gentleman, whom he was strongly suspected of causing to be
murdered, down at his country seat, Cumnor Hall in Berkshire, that he
might be free to marry the Queen. Upon this story, the great writer, SIR
WALTER SCOTT, has founded one of his best romances. But if Elizabeth
knew how to lead her handsome favourite on, for her own vanity and
pleasure, she knew how to stop him for her own pride; and his love, and
all the other proposals, came to nothing. The Queen always declared in
good set speeches, that she would never be married at all, but would live
and die a Maiden Queen. It was a very pleasant and meritorious
declaration, I suppose; but it has been puffed and trumpeted so much,
that I am rather tired of it myself.

Divers princes proposed to marry Mary, but the English court had reasons
for being jealous of th