cians and philosophers on the state of her majesty's
health; but probably not without some secret political commission. After
a variety of wild adventures in different countries of Europe, in which
he and his associate Kelly discovered still more knavery than credulity
in the exercise of their various false sciences and fallacious arts, Dee
was invited home by her majesty in 1589, and was afterwards presented by
her with the wardenship of Manchester-college. But he was hated and
sometimes insulted by the people as a conjurer; quarrelled with the
fellows of his college, quitted Manchester in disgust, and failing to
obtain the countenance of king James died at length in poverty and
neglect;--the ordinary fate of his class of projectors. Elizabeth
performed a more laudable part in lending her support to the enterprise
of that able and spirited navigator Martin Frobisher, who had long been
soliciting in vain among the merchants the means of attempting a
northwest passage to the Indies, and was finally supplied by the queen
with two small vessels. With these he set sail in June 1576, and though
unsuccessful in the prime object of his voyage, extended considerably
the previous acquaintance of navigators with the coasts of Greenland,
and became the discoverer of the straits which still bear his name.

A sect called "The family of Love" had lately sprung up in England. Its
doctrines, notwithstanding the frightful reports raised of them, were
probably dangerous neither to the established church, with the rites of
which the brethren willingly complied, nor yet to the state; and it may
be doubted whether they were in any respect incompatible with private
morals; but no innovations in religion were regarded as tolerable or
venial under the rigid administration of Elizabeth; and the leaders of
the new heresy were taken into custody, and compelled to recant. Some
anabaptists were apprehended about the same time, who acknowledged their
error at Paul's Cross, bearing faggots,--the tremendous symbol of the
fate from which their recantation had rescued them. Two of these unhappy
men, however, repented of the disingenuous act into which human frailty
had betrayed them; and returning to the open profession of their
opinions were burned in Smithfield, to the eternal opprobrium of
protestant principles and the deep disgrace of the governess and
institutress of the Anglican Church.

The observation of lord Talbot, that the earl of Leicester s