THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND.

ANOTHER Queen has been added to the list of British Sovereigns. One hundred and thirty-six years have elapsed since the accession of Anne, and from that period to the present time, this country has acknowledged the authority of kings. The charm of novelty is thus thrown arround VICTORIA, and her youth and the exciting political feelings of the day, invest her with peculiar interest. May God save the Queen! save her from the vices of courts and from the domination of evil men;-from foreign and intestine enemies, and from death, to a protracted old age.

Then

may she be gathered to the sepulchre of her fathers surrounded with the glory of a virtuous and happy reign, to inherit a crown brighter and more durable than that she

now wears.

We propose now to take a rapid view of the characters of our English Queens. BOADICEA, though she governed only the Iceni, demands notice for the brave stand she made against the Roman power. She had suffered unheard of wrongs, and the dignity of her birth, and the energy of her character made her a proper rallying point for the exasperated Britons. She carried fire and sword into the Roman colonies, and for a time was prosperous; but Suetonius the governor brought against her a force of 10,000 men, all in a state of high discipline. "Previously to the charge, Boadicea, mounted in a war chariot, with her long yellow hair streaming to her feet, with her two injured daughters beside her, drove through the ranks, and harangued the tribes or nations, each in its turn. She reminded them that she was not the first woman who had led the Britons to battle; she spoke of her own irreparable wrongs, of the wrongs of her people and all their neighbours, and said whatever was calculated to spirit them against their proud and licentious oppressors. The Britons, however, were defeated with tremendous loss; and the wretched Boadicea put an end to her existence by taking poison."

Before the next Queen ascended the throne, many cen

turies rolled away, and Britain, in all its relations, was entirely changed. Of Lady Jane Grey, who wore the crown for a few days only, nothing will now be said, as her authority was not legal. MARY known unfortunately by the epithet Bloody, put her rival, Lady Jane, to death, and made her throne steady by cutting off her opposers. Posterity has already formed an ideal picture of Mary, which nothing that can be said is likely to efface. The probability is, the features of her character as popularly understood, are somewhat too hideous. Persecution in that age, was universal. As Dr. Lingard observes, "it is but fair to recollect, that the extirpation of erroneous doctrines was inculcated as a duty by the leaders of every religious party. Mary only practised what they taught. It was her misfortune rather than her fault, that she was not more enlightened than the wisest of her contemporaries." With the exception of this persecuting spirit, Lingard, a Roman Catholic writer, ascribes to Mary an excellent character. "She has been ranked by the more moderate of the reformed writers, among the best, though not the greatest of our princes. They have borne honourable testimony to her virtues; have allotted to her the praise of piety and clemency, of compassion to the poor, and libera:ity to the distressed. It is acknowledged that her moral character was beyond reproof." Hume is by no means so favourable. He says "she possessed few qualities either estimable or amiable, and her person was as little engaging as her behaviour and address. Obstinacy, bigotry, violence, cruelty, malignity, revenge, tyranny; every circumstance of her character took a tincture from her bad temper and narrow understanding. And amidst that complication of vices which entered into her composition, we shall scarcely find any virtue but sincerity. She appears to have been susceptible of some attachments of friendship, and, in many circumstances of her life, gave indications of resolution and vigour of mind."

Queen ELIZABETH succeeded Mary, and enjoyed a long reign which has acquired the appellation of glorious.

As

it was the misfortune of Mary that the shortness of her sway and its troubles, tinged her character with a darker hue than perhaps it deserved, so Elizabeth gained a lustre from circumstances extraneous to herself. England was then in a state of rapid improvement; commerce and literature were advancing, and the number of the really pious was on the increase. Although it may sound like treason to some persons, to qualify the term, "good Queen Bess," we must demur as to its right application. A variety of circumstances, to her fortuitous, imparted a degree of glory to herself to which she was not justiy entitled. Lord Bacon in the fulsome spirit of the times in which he lived, of which he largely partook, attributes to Elizabeth almost every excellence. Hume draws a lively, and, on the whole, pleasing portrait. He justly praises her singular talents for government, her vigour, constancy, magnanimity, penetration, vigilance, and address. "The true way of estimating her merit," says Hume, "is to lay aside all considerations of her sex, and consider her merely as a rational being, placed in authority, and entrusted with the government of mankind. We may find it difficult to reconcile our fancy to her as a wife or a mistress; but her qualities as a sovereign, though with some considerable exceptions, are the object of undisputed applause and approbation." Lingard describes her as vain, ir.itable, unsparing of the blood of her subjects, parsimonious and unchaste. He dwells much on the last. According to Faunt aud Harrington, her court was a place in which "all enormities reigned in the highest degree."

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The name of ANNE introduces us to a period more like our own, of the manners of which we can judge with certainty. Macpherson states that "she was not deficient in the accomplishments of the mind; was good natured to a degree of weakness; indolent in her disposition, timid by nature, devoted to the company of her favourites, and easily led. She possessed all the virtues of her father James the second, except political courage; she was subject to all his weaknesses, except enthusiasm in religion. As a friend, a

mother, a wife, she deserved every praise. Upon the whole, though her reign was crowded with great events, she cannot with any justice be called a great princess. Subject to terror, even beyond the constitutional timidity of her sex, she was altogether incapable of decisive counsels; and nothing but her irresistible popularity could have supported her authority amidst the ferment of those distracted times."

Most sincerely do we hope that the man is not yet born who shall first describe the character of VICTORIA as a departed prince! Of what she now is, it would perhaps be difficult to speak with correctness. The sentiments of her statesmen, although they may be liable to suspicion from the situation they hold may be introduced without impropriety. Lord Melbourne stated that "her Majesty possesses the amiable, dignified, and firm character which has distinguished her family." Lord John Russell pronounced the following eulogy. "The Queen has had an admirable education, under the care of a mother, who, knowing that she was destined to fill the high station to which she is called, has been carefully solicitous that she should be equal to sustain it. But after the utmost that can be done by education we must be aware that much must depend upon the high carriage which inspires her thoughts, and upon the will and the wish to devote herself to the good of the people of this glorious country. That such will be the course that her Majesty will take, I entertain the fullest confidence. I feel sure that her royal mind will be devoted to the improvement of those institutions, which we have been fortunate enough to inherit; and that, raised as she has been, and will be, in the affectionate welcome of a great and powerful people, she will be enabled, by her confidence in gaining an accession of that welcome, under Divine Providence, to accomplish that good of which this kingdom stands so much in need at the begining of a reign, which in the future I trust will be glorious and happy."

Higgins, Printer, Dunstable.

THERE are well-defined expressions of personal and mental character which are completely beyond our controul, and for which, consequently, we are not responsible. A man does not make himself tall or short, symmetrical or disproportionate;—we never say "how wicked it is of such a person to be so unutterably ugly." In all such cases an extraneous power has been in operation, and no will of ours could have any weight whatever in deciding the deficiencies and redundances of our frame. The same observation is true of radical intellectual developments; the sanguine and the phlegmatic,-the imaginative and the common-place, the brilliant and the dull;-all these contrasts are furnished not because

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