fect knowledge of the political interests of the different European powers, of their respective strength, their relative situation, and internal resources, from whence she was enabled to judge of their means of attack and defence. He found, that although she had never conferred with Henry the Fourth, they both entertained the same design of forming a new political system, and laid the same plan of establishing a balance of power to check the aggrandizement of the house of Austria. We see no wild projects in the views of Elizabeth: her ambition was great, but it was also consistent.
That able politician, whom Elizabeth used to say was a princely, and not a priestly pope, Sixtus V. placed her among the three persons who alone, in his opinion, deserved to reign; the other two were himself and Henry IV. of France.
The hope of the protestants throughout Europe, Elizabeth felt that all persecutions of them militated against her own power. She protected the inhabitants of the Low Countries, who fled from the severities of the Duke of Alva, their Spanish governor, and in return, their skill in manufactures opened a way for a further influx of riches to England. She held her rival, Mary, queen of Scots, in confinement; and though the spirit and address of that unfortunate princess, and the activity of her adherents, were continually exercised in plots for her deliverance, which sometimes threatened Elizabeth with personal danger, she kept her own kingdom in peace and safety amidst the convulsions of a tumultuous period. The massacre of the Huguenots on St. Bartholomew's Day, filled her with alarm and sorrow. She had a powerful enemy in the king of Spain, but ventured to brave him by assisting his Flemish subjects with mo-
