ELIZABETH. 413 No doubt that, with regard to some of the candidates, politi- cal reasons existed to render an English sovereign reluctant that they should obtain the hand of the Scottish queen; Don John of Austria, for instance, would have been but a sorry neighbor for the British crown. But even when the proposi- tion was made to her that Mary should be united to Darnley, a match to which no public obstructions existed, the rancorous opposition and finesse were not only not suspended, but ap- peared to be augmented. The subject of marriages was indeed a fruitful source of torment to her : the very possibility of anybody connected with the royal blood of England, or of any favorite of herself, daring even to contemplate wedlock, seems to have had the power of rendering her almost insane with wrath and malice. This morbid state of mind was the cause of her cruel treat- ment of the unhappy Lord Hertford and his consort Lady Catherine Grey. Her conduct to these distinguished persons was atrocious : she fined them ruinously, committed them to the Tower, and detained the husband in captivity during nine years, without even attempting to allege against them the commission of the smallest crime, excepting that gravest and blackest in her distorted vision — wedlock. The truth is, that if any one of the present day desires to acquire an entire knowledge of Elizabeth, he must search for it not only among the English and Scotch, but among foreign contemporary writers. The ambassadors of these times were the most wily and insinuating of men, and the most acute and cautious of spies ; and there is no doubt that they obtained information at the courts to which they were accredited often not accessible even to the most influential of the natives. Imag- ine how profoundly subtle must be the man who would be selected by such a woman as Catherine de Medici to be her emissary at a state over which presided, such a woman as Elizabeth ! From these men proceeded, especially after the death of the latter, many valuable particulars and disclosures, all of which were recorded by the continental authors; and, to name only three, he who has not perused Du Maurier, Leti, and principally Bayle, has not a complete notion of this ex- traordinary princess. Her conduct in relation to the contemplated marriage of herself with two successive Dukes of Anjou was in complete accordance with the determination she expressed to Melville
