pher Blount, who neglected, bullied, and plundered her, but before whose earlier star that of Lord Robert, basking in the glorious rays of the western sun, paled at last.

Accomplished, adventurous, daring men-at-arms, beautiful and witty women, sometimes erring and evil, good lack! sometimes pure and staunch as she who lived among men, and could buckle men's armour on her breast, and yet loved to be termed the Virgin Queen! Draperies of cut velvet and stiff embroidery, pinked and slashed satin, like the doublet with which Sir Philip Calthorpe, the gay, insolent peacock, mocked the silly jay of a tradesman; fine beavers, seed-pearls, topaz and emerald carcanets, which might have formed a portion of the goodly wares of Sir Percy Shafton; gauds and glitters recalling Prince Arthur's bow-butts at Finsbury, and its nine hundred and forty-two gold chains, and the two thousand orange-tawny feathers, which Essex brought into the tilt-yard to spite scoffing Sir Walter Raleigh! In verity, we close our eyes, dazzled with the old show.

In the meantime, the players dragged on with their little show, their barbarous murders, and their strong speechifying; and perhaps the most suggestive thing about them was their apparel, furnished from the royal wardrobes of deceased sovereigns, so that in the truculent Briton who summarily despatched his neighbours to the shambles, Elizabeth could not help recognising the broken collar and loosely

hanging doublet of her own ruthless father, bulky Henry; and in the prim, beardless youth, who in woman's weeds submitted to his caresses, she might wince (if Elizabeth's nerves could quiver for fear) at the wimple and the hood, the purfled, tarnished gold tissue of her sister, grim Mary.

The spectators were not so free and unceremonious as they showed themselves at the Globe Theatre, where the young gallants filled the never-failing balcony when it was not needed for stage purposes, or reclined at ease on the stage itself, and smoked the new Virginian tobacco; but there was no want of heartiness and enjoyment in the audience with all its stateliness, and Elizabeth with her own hand nearly boxed the ears of rough, honest Hunsdon, for an unsavoury comparison that smacked more of simple, jovial impulse, than artificial refinement.

As the drama drew to a close, Elizabeth remarked with approval the postures and elocution of a young man filling a subordinate post, and making it prominent by his innate sympathy and earnestness. She had dubbed Preston her scholar with solid advantages accruing to the distinction; and she had a gold chessman at hand to bestow as the prize on this day's efforts thus her notice was interested and critical.

'That youth plays well,' she repeated decidedly, using a pouncet-box with which Lord Robert had been toying; he hath well nigh earned my guerdon.' 'The learned bumpkin is vastly honoured by such notice,' sneered the haughty and crafty courtier.

'Doth thy Grace not note how his hair hath never seen the gracious unguents and floating powders with which we strive to make ourselves personable under thy countenance.'

'I do not see what an ancient Briton hath to do with powder, or pomatum, or starch for his ruff, or for that matter with a ruff at all,' answered Elizabeth, shrewdly; and I can on my conscience commend this lad's natural locks as not being dependent on a master barber,' she added perversely, but not offended, rather flattered by her attendant's intolerance. 'Prithee, what called you him, Dr. Stokes?' she concluded, holding to her purpose, and addressing one of the deans who stood in his sombre. black at her elbow, rather scouted, it must be confessed, by the gay damsels and knights.

'Master William Lee, please your highness, a worthy scholar in this University, and like to be a credit to his patrons,' answered the doctor, formally and deliberately.

'Said I not so!' exclaimed the Queen, gratified at this confirmation of her discernment.

And said I not that he was some scholarly beggar?' murmured Lord Robert.

Is he of kin to our good friend and champion, Lee of Ditchley?' inquired Elizabeth.

'But distantly, your Grace, and destitute of patrimony, clean destitute by-by confiscation in the late reign,' stammered the professor.

a good subject of mine hath paid forfeit to my predecessors-the more reason that I should recompense him.'

Sir Henry's poor kinsman who hath grown sour on the burnt porridge, the lean side of the venison, and the muddy draught of the ale; and hath therefore quitted the Hall, and taken to creeping and dreaming through college galleries and cells, fie on him! could he not find a sword, and fight like a man to amend his birthright?'

'Nay now, sirrah, we will not have all cut-throats and dare-devils,' tapping him somewhat sharply with her fan; 'we must have our doctors and divines, our choice students, like Master Roger, bred in this very University, to teach us our letters, and remind us how the ancients strode, and swore, and bragged, and plotted-like my Lord Strange or Robin himself here, who, if rumour lies not, hath, in spite of his words, condescended to study other arts than those which pertain to riding the ring, and taking say of a buck—in the presence-chamber and the camp.'

At the laughing and partial accusation Lord Robert's ruddy cheek-for it was a peculiarity of his otherwise swarthy beauty that the cheek grazed by his ear-jewel was warm in its brown as 'red poppies grown with corn'-deepened in its scarlet. Very soon-dogging his prosperity were whispers abroad, true or false, scorned by his mistress, of the nature of the secrets by which a foe of Lord Robert never lingered to cumber his progress.

The Queen continued, warmly, 'Good faith, ladies and gentlemen, our free, pure, and godly Protestant faith were never established, guarded, and preserved to latest generations without such learned and grave gentlemen; so when the play is played out let room be made for Master Lee.'

The last act was over, and in place of a descending curtain, or the Queen's anthem, the impromptu players, in their stage suits, came forward, and kneeling down reverently enough, offered up an audible prayer for the Queen's Majesty, to which the most reckless of the courtiers, and the Queen with her own lips, uttered a sonorous Amen then marshalled by some of the chiefs of the University, anxious to get in their own word, amid considerable excitement the lucky youth was brought before the sovereign.

Master William Lee was a young man of three or four and twenty years of age, handsome, although without a tinge of the florid, dainty beauty of many of Elizabeth's body-guard. He was pale, and of a hard, cold aspect, as if his young blood had frozen in the chill, secluded class-rooms and cabinets of learning, and among the grey tomes and crackling parchments of centuries; only at times an inner fire unconsciously flashed up in its passive prison-house, and there was no want of physical development in the well-knit but stiffened frame of the scholar.

'Marry!' whispered light Frances Howard, 'it is a clerk from a tombstone.'