erect there a pillar, and to engrave upon the side thereof this sentence, "Over this stile is the way to Doubting Castle, which is kept by Giant Despair, who despiseth the King of the Celestial Country, and seeks to destroy His holy pilgrims." Many therefore that followed after read what was written and escaped the danger.

THE UNIVERSAL PRAYER

BY ALEXANDer Pope

Pope was an English poet. He was born in 1688 and died in 1744. "The Rape of the Lock" is, perhaps, his best poem. "The Essay on Criticism" and "The Essay on Man" contain many often quoted passages.

Father of all! in every age,

In every clime adored,

By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!

What conscience dictates to be done,

Or warns me not to do,

This teach me more than hell to shun,
That more than heaven pursue.

What blessings Thy free bounty gives
Let me not cast away;

For God is paid when man receives:
To enjoy is to obey.

Yet not to earth's contracted span

Thy goodness let me bound,

t

Or think Thee Lord alone of man, When thousand worlds are round.

If I am right, Thy grace impart
Still in the right to stay;
If I am wrong, oh, teach my heart
To find that better way!

Save me alike from foolish pride
Or impious discontent,

At aught Thy wisdom has denied
Or aught Thy goodness lent.

Teach me to feel another's woe,
To hide the fault I see;
That mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me.

Mean though I am, not wholly so,
Since quickened by Thy breath;
Oh, lead me whereso'er I go,

Through this day's life or death.

This day be bread and peace my lot; All else beneath the sun

Thou knowest if best bestowed or not, And let Thy will be done.

To Thee, Whose temple is all space,

Whose altar, earth, sea, skies, —

One chorus let all beings raise,

All Nature's incense rise.

QUEEN ELIZABETH

FROM HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE," BY JOHN RICHARD GREEN

Green was an English historian. He was born in 1837 and died in 1883. His histories-"History of the English People," "The Making of England," and "The Conquest of England" describe the life and growth of the people instead of merely making record of kings and queens. This description of Elizabeth is an example of his clear, forcible style.

Queen Elizabeth's reign was the most brilliant in English history, and her personality is one of the most interesting. You will find it entertaining to read what other historians say about her. Read, also, about the great men of action and of letters who flourished during her reign. Scott's novel, "Kenilworth," and Kingsley's "Westward Ho!" give vivid pictures of Elizabethan times.

To the world about her, the temper of Elizabeth recalled in its strange contrasts the mixed blood within her veins. She was at once the daughter of Henry and of Anne Boleyn. From her father she inherited her frank and hearty address, her love of popularity and of free intercourse with the people, her dauntless courage, and her amazing selfconfidence. Her harsh, manlike voice, her impetuous will, her pride, her furious outbursts of anger, came to her with her Tudor blood. She rated great nobles as if they were schoolboys; she met the insolence of Lord Essex with a box on the ear; she broke now and then into the gravest deliberations to swear at her ministers like a fishwife.

Strangely in contrast with these violent outlines of her father's temper stood the sensuous, self-indulgent nature

she drew from Anne Boleyn. Splendor and pleasure were with Elizabeth the very air she breathed. Her delight was to move in perpetual progresses from castle to castle through a series of gorgeous pageants, fanciful and extravagant as a caliph's dream. She loved gayety and laughter and wit. A happy retort or a finished compliment never failed to win her favor. She hoarded jewels. Her dresses were innumerable. Her vanity remained,

or

even to old age, the vanity of a coquette in her teens. No adulation was too fulsome for her, no flattery of her beauty too gross. She would play with her rings that her courtiers might note the delicacy of her hands; dance a coranto that an ambassador, hidden dexterously behind a curtain, might report her sprightliness to his master. Her levity, her frivolous laughter, her unwomanly jests, gave color to a thousand scandals. Her character, in fact, like her portraits, was utterly without shade.

It was no wonder that the statesmen whom she outwitted held Elizabeth to be little more than a frivolous woman, or that Philip of Spain wondered how "a wanton could hold in check the policy of the Escurial. But the Elizabeth whom they saw was far from being all of Elizabeth. Willfulness and triviality played over the surface of a nature hard as steel, a temper purely intellectual, the very type of reason untouched by imagination or passion. Luxurious and pleasure-loving as she seemed, the young queen lived simply and frugally, and she worked hard. Her vanity and caprice had no weight whatever with her in state affairs. The coquette of the presence-chamber became the coolest and hardest of politicians at the coun

cil-board. Fresh from the flattery of her courtiers, she would tolerate no flattery in the closet; she was herself plain and downright of speech with her counselors, and she looked for a corresponding plainness of speech in

return.

The very choice of her advisers, indeed, showed Elizabeth's ability. She had a quick eye for merit of any sort, and a wonderful power of enlisting its whole energy in her service. The sagacity which chose Cecil and Walsingham was just as unerring in its choice of the meanest of her agents. Her success, indeed, in securing from the beginning of her reign to its end, with the single exception of Leicester, precisely the right men for the work she set them to do, sprang in great measure from the noblest characteristic of her intellect. If in loftiness of aim the queen's temper fell below many of the tempers of her time, in the breadth of its range, in the universality of its sympathy, it stood far above them all. . .

No nobler group of ministers ever gathered round a council-board than those who gathered round the councilboard of Elizabeth. But she was the instrument of none. She listened, she weighed, she used or put by the counsels of each in turn, but her policy as a whole was her own. It was a policy, not of genius, but of good sense. Her aims were simple and obvious to preserve her throne, to keep England out of war, to restore civil and religious order. Something of womanly caution and timidity, perhaps, backed the passionless indifference with which she set aside the larger schemes of ambition which were ever opening before her eyes. In later days she was