to her
ambassador of a marriage between his mistress and her third son the
duke of Anjou, then only seventeen years of age. Elizabeth was assuredly
not so much of a dupe as to believe the queen-mother sincere in this
strange proposal; yet it was entertained by her with the utmost apparent
seriousness. She even thought proper to give it a certain degree of
cautious encouragement, which Catherine was doubtless well able rightly
to interpret; and with this extraordinary kind of mutual understanding,
these two ingenious females continued for months, nay years, to amuse
themselves and one another with the representation of carrying on of
negotiations for a treaty of marriage. Elizabeth, with the most candid
and natural air in the world, remarked that difference of religion would
present the most serious obstacle to so desirable an union: Catherine,
with equal plausibility, hoped that on this point terms of agreement
might be found satisfactory to both parties; and warming as they
proceeded, one began to imagine the conditions to which a catholic
prince could with honor accede, and the other to invent the objections
which ought to be made to them by a protestant princess.

The philosophical inquirer, who has learned from the study of history
how much more the high destinies of nations are governed by the
permanent circumstances of geographical position and relative force, and
the great moral causes which act upon whole ages and peoples, than by
negotiations, intrigues, schemes of politicians and tricks of state,
will be apt to regard as equally futile and base the petty manoeuvres
of dissimulation and artifice employed by each queen to incline in her
own favor the political balance. But in justice to the memories of
Catherine and Elizabeth,--women whom neither their own nor any
after-times have taxed with folly,--it ought at least to be observed,
that in mistaking the excess of falsehood for the perfection of address,
the triumphs of cunning for the masterpieces of public wisdom, they did
but partake the error of the ablest male politicians of that age of
statesmen. The same narrow views of the interest of princes and of
states governed them all: they seem to have believed that the right and
the expedient were constantly opposed to each other; in the intercourses
of public men they thought that nothing was more carefully to be shunned
than plain speaking and direct dealings, and in these functionaries they
regarded the use of