me to her assistance somewhat indeed
too late for her own dignity, but soon enough to intercept any serious
mischief to the earl; and having found leisure to reflect on the folly
and disgrace of openly maintaining an ineffectual resentment, she soon
after readmitted the offender to the same station of seeming favor as
before. There has appeared however some ground to suspect that the queen
never entirely dismissed her feelings of mortification; or again reposed
in Essex the same unbounded confidence with which she had once honored
him. From a passage of a letter addressed by lord Buckhurst to sir
Robert Sidney, then governor of the Brill, we learn, that in the autumn
of the next year she still retained such displeasure against sir Robert
for having been present at a banquet given by Essex, either on occasion
of his marriage, or with a view to the furtherance of some design of his
which excited her suspicion, that she could not be induced to grant him
leave of absence for a visit to England.

But cares and occupations of a nature peculiarly uncongenial with the
indulgence of sentimental sorrows, now claimed, and not in vain, the
serious thoughts of this prudent and vigilant princess. The low state
of her finances, exhausted by no wasteful prodigalities, but by the
necessary measures of national defence and the politic aid which she had
extended to the United Provinces and to the French Hugonots, now
threatened to place her in a painful dilemma. She must either desert her
allies, and suffer her navy to relapse into the dangerous state of
weakness from which she had exerted all her efforts to raise it, or
summon a new parliament for the purpose of making fresh demands upon the
purses of her people; and this at the risk either of shaking their
attachment, or,--a humiliation not to be endured,--seeing herself
compelled to sacrifice to the importunities of the popular members some
of the more oppressive branches of her prerogative; the right of
purveyance for instance, or that of granting monopolies; both of which
she had suffered to grow into enormous grievances. Mature reflection
discovered to her, however, a third alternative; that of practising a
still stricter oeconomy on one hand, and on the other, of increasing
the productiveness to the exchequer of the customs and other branches of
revenue, by reforming abuses, by detecting frauds and embezzlements, and
by cutting off the exorbitant profits of collectors.

This last