om festoons of flowers
intermixed with evergreens, and the whole was powdered with gold
spangles; the ceiling was painted like a sky with stars, sunbeams, and
clouds, intermixed with scutcheons of the royal arms; and glass
lustres and ornaments were scattered all around. Here were enacted
masques and pageants chiefly remarkable for their pedantic prolixity
of composition, and the fulsome and gross flattery towards the queen
with which they were throughout invested.

Everything, in accordance with the rage of the day, assumed an
erudite, or, more truly speaking, a pedantic cast. When the queen
(says Warton) paraded through a country town, almost every pageant was
a pantheon. When she paid a visit at the house of any of her nobility,
at entering the hall she was saluted by the Penates, and conducted to
her privy chamber by Mercury. Even the pastry cooks were expert
mythologists. At dinner, select transformations of Ovid's
metamorphoses were exhibited in confectionary; and the splendid iceing
of an immense historic plum-cake was embossed with a delicious
basso-relievo of the destruction of Troy. In the afternoon, when she
condescended to walk in the garden, the lake was covered with Tritons
and Nereids; the pages of the family were converted into wood-nymphs,
who peeped from every bower; and the footmen gambolled over the lawns
in the figure of satyrs.

Scarcely we think could even the effusions of Euphues--a fashion also
of this period--be more wearisome to the spirit than a repetition of
these dull delights.

This predilection for learning, and the time perforce given to its
acquisition, must necessarily have subtracted from those hours which
might otherwise have been bestowed on the lighter labours and
beguiling occupations of the needle. Nor does it appear that after her
accession Elizabeth did much patronise this gentle art. She was cast
in a more stirring mould. In her father's court, under her sister's
jealous eye, within her prison's solitary walls, her needle might be a
prudent disguise, a solacing occupation, "woman's pretty excuse for
thought." But after her own accession to the throne _action_ was her
characteristic.

Nevertheless we are not to suppose that, because needlework was not "a
rage," it was frowned upon and despised. By no means. It is perhaps
fortunate that Elizabeth did not especially patronise it; for so
dictatorial and absolute was she, that by virtue of the "right divine"
she would have ma