558

Mary's unhappy reign.--Unrequited love.--Mary's sufferings.--Her
religious principles.--Progress of Mary's Catholic zeal.--Her
moderation at first.--Mary's terrible persecution of the
Protestants.--Burning at the stake.--The title of Bloody given to
Mary.--Mary and Elizabeth reconciled.--Scenes of festivity.--The war
with France.--Loss of Calais.--Murmurs of the English.--King of
Sweden's proposal to Elizabeth.--Mary's energy.--Mary's privy council
alarmed.--Their perplexity.--Uncertainty about Elizabeth's future
course.--Her cautious policy.--Death of Mary.--Announcement to
Parliament.--Elizabeth proclaimed.--Joy of the people.--The Te
Deum.--Elizabeth's emotions.--Cecil made secretary of state.--His
faithfulness.--Elizabeth's charge to Cecil.--Her journey to
London.--Elizabeth's triumphant entrance into the Tower.--The
coronation.--Pageants in the streets.--Devices.--Presentation of the
Bible.--The heavy purse.--The sprig of rosemary.--The wedding ring.

If it were the story of Mary instead of that of Elizabeth that we were
following, we should have now to pause and draw a very melancholy
picture of the scenes which darkened the close of the queen's
unfortunate and unhappy history. Mary loved her husband, but she could
not secure his love in return. He treated her with supercilious coldness
and neglect, and evinced, from time to time, a degree of interest in
other ladies which awakened her jealousy and anger. Of all the terrible
convulsions to which the human soul is subject, there is not one which
agitates it more deeply than the tumult of feeling produced by the
mingling of resentment and love. Such a mingling, or, rather, such a
conflict, between passions apparently inconsistent with each other, is
generally considered not possible by those who have never experienced
it. But it is possible. It is possible to be stung with a sense of the
ingratitude, and selfishness, and cruelty of an object, which, after
all, the heart will persist in clinging to with the fondest affection.
Vexation and anger, a burning sense of injury, and desire for revenge,
on the one hand, and feelings of love, resistless and uncontrollable,
and bearing, in their turn, all before them, alternately get possession
of the soul, harrowing and devastating it in their awful conflict, and
even sometimes reigning over it, for a time, in a temporary but dreadful
calm, like that of two wrestlers who pause a moment, exhausted in a
mortal combat,