bly upon the trend of history.

However, if we look over these different events we shall find that it
is not so much the mere longing for a woman--the desire to have her as
a queen--that has seriously affected the annals of any nation. Kings,
like ordinary men, have paid their suit and then have ridden away
repulsed, yet not seriously dejected. Most royal marriages are made
either to secure the succession to a throne by a legitimate line of
heirs or else to unite adjoining states and make a powerful kingdom out
of two that are less powerful. But, as a rule, kings have found greater
delight in some sheltered bower remote from courts than in the castled
halls and well-cared-for nooks where their own wives and children have
been reared with all the appurtenances of legitimacy.

There are not many stories that hang persistently about the love-making
of a single woman. In the case of one or another we may find an episode
or two--something dashing, something spirited or striking, something
brilliant and exhilarating, or something sad. But for a woman's whole
life to be spent in courtship that meant nothing and that was only a
clever aid to diplomacy--this is surely an unusual and really wonderful
thing.

It is the more unusual because the woman herself was not intended by
nature to be wasted upon the cold and cheerless sport of chancellors
and counselors and men who had no thought of her except to use her as a
pawn. She was hot-blooded, descended from a fiery race, and one whose
temper was quick to leap into the passion of a man.

In studying this phase of the long and interesting life of Elizabeth of
England we must notice several important facts. In the first place, she
gave herself, above all else, to the maintenance of England--not an
England that would be half Spanish or half French, or even partly Dutch
and Flemish, but the Merry England of tradition--the England that was
one and undivided, with its growing freedom of thought, its bows and
bills, its nut-brown ale, its sturdy yeomen, and its loyalty to crown
and Parliament. She once said, almost as in an agony:

"I love England more than anything!"

And one may really hold that this was true.

For England she schemed and planned. For England she gave up many of
her royal rights. For England she descended into depths of treachery.
For England she left herself on record as an arrant liar, false,
perjured, yet successful; and because of her success for England's sak