had humbled in the
dust the pride and power of France.

This last stroke completed the dejection of the nation; and Mary
herself, who was by no means destitute of sensibility where the honor of
her crown was concerned, sunk into an incurable melancholy. "When I
die," said she to her attendants who sought to discover the cause of her
despondency, "Calais will be found at my heart."

The unfeeling desertion of her husband, the consciousness of having
incurred the hatred of her subjects, the unprosperous state of her
affairs, and the well founded apprehension that her successor would once
more overthrow the whole edifice of papal power which she had labored
with such indefatigable ardor to restore, may each be supposed to have
infused its own drop of bitterness into the soul of this unhappy
princess. The long and severe mortifications of her youth, while they
soured her temper, had also undermined her constitution, and contributed
to bring upon her a premature old age; dropsical symptoms began to
appear, and after a lingering illness of nearly half a year she sunk
into the grave on the 17th day of November 1558, in the forty-fourth
year of her age.

CHAPTER IX.

1558 AND 1559.

General joy on the accession of Elizabeth.--Views of the nobility--of
the middling and lower classes.--Flattery with which she is
addressed.--Descriptions of her person.--Her first privy-council.--Parry
and Cecil brought into office.--Notices of each.--Death of cardinal
Pole.--The queen enters London--passes to the Tower.--Lord Robert Dudley
her master of the horse.--Notices respecting him.--The queen's treatment
of her relations.--The Howard family.--Sir Richard Sackville.--Henry
Cary.--The last, created lord Hunsdon.--Preparations in London against
the queen's coronation.--Splendid costume of the age.--She passes by
water from Westminster to the Tower.--The procession described.--Her
passage through the city.--Pageants exhibited.--The bishops refuse to
crown her.--Bishop of Carlisle prevailed on.--Religious sentiments of
the queen.--Prohibition of preaching--of theatrical exhibitions.

Never perhaps was the accession of any prince the subject of such keen
and lively interest to a whole people as that of Elizabeth.

Both in the religious establishments and political relations of the
country, the most important changes were anticipated; changes in which
the humblest individual found himself concerned, and to which a vast
majority o