whose magic power will create love
or cause infidelity and hatred. Never had poetry been fuller of
imagery or sweeter in verification than in the lines spoken by
Oberon; nor had Queen Elizabeth ever received a more graceful
compliment:--

"Thou rememberest
Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea maid's music.
That very time I saw, but thou could'st not,
Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid all arm'd; a certain aim he took
At a fair vestal throned by the West,
And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow.
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts;
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon,
And the imperial votaress passed on,
In maiden meditation, fancy free.
Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell;
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound,
And maidens call it love-in-idleness.
Fetch me that flower."

[Illustration: Earl of Leicester receiving Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth

"And the imperial votaress passed on
In maiden meditation fancy free."
]

Mark the Queen's flushed cheek and parted lips! The "mermaid on the
dolphin's back" is no fancy picture, but an exact description of one
of the pageants at the festivities in her honour at Kenilworth.
Although twenty years have passed, memory still loves to linger about
those days when she visited her favourite, the fascinating Earl of
Leicester, on her royal progress, before state policy and private
pique had combined to create strife and alienation.

From memory also was the verse-picture painted. The lad of eleven, who
had made light of the fifteen miles between Kenilworth and Stratford
by tearing across ditch and hedge and meadow, could not easily forget
the sights of that memorable day. Little then could he foresee the
present hour; but rightly now does he judge that these reminiscences
of the olden days will please Her Majesty.

Rightly also does he judge that the ridiculous situations between the
lovers will not be displeasing. A Queen whose whole reign has been
marked by warfare against the marriage of her courtiers and her
clergy