er laws against this
already persecuted sect; and Elizabeth judged it expedient to accord a
ready assent to these statutes, for the purpose of tranquillizing the
minds of her protestant subjects on the score of religion, previously to
the renewal of negotiations with the court of France.

Simier, who still remained in England, had been but too successful in
continuing or reviving the tender impressions created in the heart of
the queen by the personal attentions of his master; and the French
king, finding leisure to turn his attention once more to this object,
from which he had been apparently diverted by the civil wars which had
broken out afresh in his country, was encouraged to send in 1581 a
splendid embassy, headed by a prince of the blood, to settle the terms
of this august alliance, of which every one now expected to see the
completion. A magnificent reception was prepared by Elizabeth for these
noble strangers; but she had the weakness to choose to appear before
them in the borrowed character of a heroine of romance, rather than in
that of a great princess whose vigorous yet cautious politics had
rendered her for more than twenty years the admiration of all the
statesmen of Europe. She caused to be erected on the south side of her
palace of Whitehall, a vast banqueting-house framed of timber and
covered with painted canvass, which was decorated internally in a style
of the most fantastic gaudiness. Pendants of fruits of various kinds
(amongst which cucumbers and carrots are enumerated) were hung from
festoons of ivy, bay, rosemary, and different flowers, the whole
lavishly sprinkled with gold spangles: the ceiling was painted like a
sky, with stars, sunbeams, and clouds, intermixed with scutcheons of the
royal arms; and a profusion of glass lustres illuminated the whole. In
this enchanted palace the French ambassadors were entertained by the
maiden queen at several splendid banquets, while her ministers were
engaged by her command in drawing up the marriage articles. Meantime
several of her youthful courtiers, anxious to complete the gay illusion
in the imagination of their sovereign, prepared for the exhibition of
what was called _a triumph_,--of which the following was the plan.

The young earl of Arundel, lord Windsor, Philip Sidney, and Fulke
Greville, the four challengers, styled themselves the foster-children of
Desire, and to that end of the tilt-yard where her majesty was seated,
their adulation gave th