Queen of England

“ The Queen of England, whose imperial name
From England’s heart and lips tumultuous springs
In prayers and thanksgivings,
Because your greatness and her greatness shine
Merged each in each, as stars their beams that intertwine.
Yet in the inmost heart, where folded close
The richest treasures of the poorest lie,
Love, whose clear eyes see many secrets, knows
A nobler name than Queen to call you by,
And breathes it silently;
But, ’mid His listening crowd of angels, One
Shall speak your name and say, “Faithful and good, well done!”
AFTER SIXTY YEARS
Ring, bells! ”

“ While she is Queen of England.
Says she, I’ll try my utmost skill,
That the poor may have their fill;
Forsake them!—no, I never will,
When I am Queen of England.{274}
For oft my mother said to me,
Let this your study always be,
To see the people blest and free,
Should you be Queen of England.
And now, my daughter, you do reign,
Much opposition to sustain,
You’ll surely have, before you gain
The blessings of Old England.
O yes, dear mother, that is true,
I know my sorrows won’t be few,
Poor people shall have work to do,
When I am Queen of England. ”

“ This was the first time I ever saw the woman who holds the most exalted position in the world, the Queen of England, who has so filled that supreme station that her name is respected wherever it is heard abroad, and that she is regarded by her own people with a loyal love such as no earthly dignity but that of personal worthiness can command. ”

“ THE AGE OF ELIZABETH, 1558-1603 The Reign of Elizabeth.—Queen Elizabeth, who ranks among the greatest of the world's rulers, was the daughter of Henry VIII. and his second wife Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth reigned as queen of England from 1558 until her death in 1603. The remarkable allowances which she made for difference of opinion showed that she felt the spirit of the Renaissance. She loved England, and her most important acts were guided, not by selfish personal motives, but by a strong desire to make England a great nation. ”

“ To all the power which a beautiful woman, and a woman strong in body and intellect and passion, always has possessed and always will possess, she added the prestige of being Queen of England. Whereas the passions of her father threw Europe into confusion, the love affairs of Elizabeth, less impetuously managed, often held the balance between nations and brought every royal prince to England as suitor for her hand, and the great English courtiers scowled or laughed at them, but were kept in allegiance by their sovereign. ”

“ She stands [65] there as though mounting the steps to her throne, her head slightly turned, looking back over her shoulder, and we feel the buoyancy of her youth and the dignity of her purity, a far more royal robe than the one of velvet and ermine which is over her shoulders, and we know that she is already worthy of the homage so universally paid her, this girl Queen of England awaiting what the future may bring. ”

“ With a divided people, with an aristocracy to a great extent sold to do the work of her powerful and, as it proved, deadly enemy, the Queen of England, with all the disadvantages of attractive charms and inexperienced youth, she was going, as it were, from calm sunshine to perpetual tempest, and into a very whirlpool of dark passions and heated antipathies, which required a far more vigorous hand, a far cooler and more worldly temperament than her own to steer through. ”

“ No man shall ever say, with truth, that the Queen of England had at any time and ever so slightly failed in her promises, whether to the mightiest monarch, to republics, to gentlemen, or even to private persons of the humblest condition. ”

“ The King of England had been dining with the King of France, waited upon by the Dukes of Burgundy, Berry, and Bourbon, both monarchs having been much entertained by the amusing conversation of the last-mentioned prince, when the sound of trumpets and other music announced the approach of the young Queen of England, who entered the camp with a procession of surpassing magnificence, wearing royal robes covered with fleurs-de-lis, a gentleman of her train carrying a crown of gold before her carriage. ”

“ When Elizabeth was Queen of England it was a time of great deeds and great men. The queen was brave and clever herself, so she liked to have brave and clever people around her. Great soldiers, and writers, and statesmen went to her court; and when brave seamen came back from their voyages to unknown lands far away, they were invited by the queen to visit her, and tell her of all the strange places and people they had seen. In this Elizabeth was wise, for men did their best to show themselves worthy of her favours. ”

“ Of all the sovereigns that have worn the crown of England, Queen Elizabeth is the most puzzling, the most fascinating, the most blindly praised, and the most unjustly blamed. To make lists of her faults and virtues is easy. ”

“ The popularity of the Queen grows with every year added to her reign, and the joy and enthusiasm with which her three hundred and fifty millions of subjects acclaim it are the crowning and most touching feature of her Diamond Jubilee. The Queen fully merits this apotheosis, since she is the noblest incarnation of all the leading qualities of the Anglo-Saxon race—love of her home, firmness of purpose, energy in effort, unswerving devotion to duty. England sees herself mirrored in her Sovereign, and takes just pride in the presentment. ”

“ Thus began a new era for England.
"A devoted mother gave the kingdom a devoted queen, eliciting the gratitude and respect of the nation, which commingles with the love and reverence the daughter gives her mother's memory. A part of her training was the development of that natural poise and dignity that has ever graced her Majesty, and the happy faculty of doing the right thing at the right time. She never ceased to be the queen, but was always the most charming, cheerful, unaffected queen in the world." ”

“ You know her best as the Queen of that great age of England which shattered the empire of Spain and won for the English blood and English ideals the heritage of the New World and changed the future of humanity. In the triumph of that fight we see the fierce, keen face of Elizabeth, and that cold Tudor craft of hers and the vehement will. ”

“ We will now tell the story of a young girl who became the most famous Queen that the world has ever known and laid the real foundations for the modern greatness of the English nation. The name of this girl was Elizabeth, and the time in which she lived has since been called the Elizabethan Era. For England at that time was rich in the bravest soldiers, the most daring sailors and the greatest men of genius, and Elizabeth knew well how to surround herself with these men and use their great talents to benefit her country. ”

“ So, when Mary the Queen of England died and the Princess Elizabeth ascended the English throne, Henry II of France insisted that his daughter-in-law was the rightful sovereign of the British Isles. A great tournament was being given in honor of the marriage of Elizabeth of France to Philip II of Spain, and the French King had Mary borne to her place on the royal balcony in a car of triumph with the banners of Scotland and England together flying over her head, and heralds in front of her crying, "Hail, hail, all hail the Queen of England!" ”

“ The Queen is not the third, but the first of her name, and although there are no doubt many causes for anxiety as regards the outlook in our political and social history, yet there are still greater causes for hopefulness and for confidence that the marvellous improvement in the social, moral, and material condition of the people which has marked the reign in the past will be continued in the future.
It is not very easy at this distance of time to picture to one’s self the passion of loyalty and devotion inspired by the young girl who became Queen of England in 1837. ”

“ Those ten years covered many strange events, many varying fortunes—the death of her brother, the boy King Edward, the sad tragedy of Lady Jane Grey, Wyatt's rebellion, the tanner's revolt, and all the long horror of the reign of "Bloody Mary." You may read of all this in history, and may see how, through it all, the young princess grew still more firm of will, more self-reliant, wise, and strong, developing all those peculiar qualities that helped to make her England's greatest queen, and one of the most wonderful women in history. ”

“ The nobles base them, so she said, on the services of their ancestors; but if the children have renounced their virtue, neglect honour, care only for their families, despise the King and his laws and commit treason, must the sovereign even then still let his power be limited by theirs? How vast were the plans which this Queen entertained—to restore Catholicism in Scotland, to resume the war against the nobility in which her ancestors had failed, to overthrow the Protestant opinions, and therewith to become one day Queen of England! ”

“ But the greatness of the queen rests above all on her power over her people.
We have had grander and nobler rulers, but none so popular as Elizabeth. The passion of love, of loyalty, of admiration, which finds its most perfect expression in the “Faery Queen,” throbbed as intensely through the veins of her meanest subjects. To England, during her reign of half a century, she was a virgin and a Protestant queen; and her immorality, her absolute want of religious enthusiasm, failed utterly to blur the brightness of the national idea. Her worst acts broke fruitlessly against the general devotion. ”

“ I find another impression also—that the Queen of England is intensely and alertly mental—alive to her finger tips, we should say in America. She has always been active. Her days are crowded. A different type of royal woman would be content to be the honoured head of the Queen's Guild. ”

“ Owing to a number of deaths in the royal family, and William IV having no heir, the Duchess of Kent, mother of the Princess Victoria, told the child, when she was but twelve years of age, that some day she might become Queen of England. ”

“ Queen—an accomplished and handsome woman, the pride of England, the hope of France and Holland, and the dread of Spain—had probably listened with more than usual favor to that mixture of romantic gallantry with which she always loved to be addrest, and the earl had, in vanity, in ambition, or in both, thrown in more and more of that delicious ingredient, until his importunity became the language of love itself. ”

“ In spite of their loyalty and enthusiasm in realising the reward of their long devotion, the people could not fail to observe, that the Queen at thirty-seven, worn with trouble and sickness, was eclipsed by Elizabeth’s twenty years. ”

“ In our tracing of these events we have taken an impartial view of the character and conduct of Queen Elizabeth. Perhaps with no other monarch is it so necessary to discriminate between fond traditions and the cold facts of history. Elizabeth was a woman of a masculine and penetrating mind; no ruler ever knew more ably how to select capable ministers, and surround herself with the splendour of statesmanlike talent, bravery, and genius. ”

“ WAR and rumours of war,—nation rising against nation,—these fulfilled and yet threatening disasters have culminated in the worst disaster of all, the “passing” of the greatest, purest, best, and most blameless Monarch in our history. England’s Queen is dead! The words sound as heavily as though one should say, “The sun is no longer in the sky!” Strange indeed is it to think of England without the Mother-Queen of the great British people;—to realize4 that she, the gentle and beneficent Lady of the Land, has left us for ever! ”

“ Meanwhile, the Queen maintained the long-standing reputation of her court with undiminished strictness. ‘The Queen’s public receptions,’ says Sir Jonah Barrington, ‘were the most gracious in the world. There could not be a more engaging, kind, and condescending address than that of the Queen of England. An illustration of her strictness is afforded us by an anecdote told of her Majesty and an English duchess, who was aunt to a niece of rather blemished reputation, but to which it was hoped some lustre might be restored if she could only be made to pass through a court atmosphere. ”

“ The Faery Queen is his sovereign, whose figure under the manifold symbols of the qualities which she possessed, or which were ascribed to her, is always coming forward afresh in his verse. With wonderful power Elizabeth united around her all the aspiring minds and energies of the nation. ”

“ Thus, Henry IV. of France, and William III. of England have been admired in spite of their defects.
Queen Elizabeth is the first among the great female sovereigns of the world with whose reign we associate a decided progress in national wealth, power, and prosperity; so that she ranks with the great men who have administered kingdoms. If I can prove this fact, the sex should be proud of so illustrious a woman, and should be charitable to those foibles which sullied the beauty of her character, since they were in part faults of the age, and developed by the circumstances which surrounded her. ”

“ No one will deny that the Queen in the closing years of her long and splendid reign must have seen this reverence dying out and that her heart must often have been surcharged with weeping when she considered the great change that has come over modern thought and modern life since she first ascended the throne, a shy, pretty little girl, with all England waiting to do her homage. ”

“ Oh, rather! She insists on enough pomp and ceremony for a Queen of England, at least. And, I’m glad for her to have her way—it’s her own daughter, you know, but she changes all the details every few hours. ”

“ When the son of England's great Queen becomes subject to a subject, that he may learn wisdom, when the sons of England's chiefs and nobles leave the homes and wealth of their fathers, and with their young Prince endure hardships and sufferings in order that they may be wise and become a defense to their country, when we behold these things, we see why the English are a great and mighty nation. ”