can deny that these princesses would have been better women if their actions had been more conformable to the principles inculcated by the pure and apostolic doctrines of the church of England. No sincere friend of that church can blame those who transfer the reproach, which political religionists have brought on their profession, from her to the individuals who have violated her precepts under the pretext of defending her interests.

Enough of sin, enough of sorrow, have surely been related of queens of the Romish church, to satisfy any candid reader that they have been portrayed, not according to the ideal perfections of angelic beings, but with all the follies, the inconsistencies, the frailties to which fallen and corrupt human nature is heir. If we had represented them otherwise, we should have acted as absurdly as those who argue, after the fashion of stultified heathens, by raising a clamour and reiterating cries of, "Great is the Diana of the Ephesians."

Even an author of fiction, as the most distinguished living writer in that department of literature has wittily observed, "cannot make characters amiable, great, or good, by describing them as such, but must make actions define the character in order to produce a proper effect on the reader's mind."* Biographers have no licence to invent actions, neither can they, conscientiously, omit facts which militate against preconceived opinions. The queens of England were not the shadowy queens of tragedy or romance, to whom imaginary words and deeds could be imputed to suit a purpose. They were the queens of real life, who exercised their own free will in the words they spoke, the parts they performed, the influence they exercised, the letters they wrote. They have left mute but irrefragable witnesses of what they were in their own deeds, for which they, and not their biographers, must stand accountable. To tamper with truth, for the sake of conventional views, is an imbecility not to be expected of historians. Events spring out of each other: therefore, either to suppress or give a false version of one, leads the reader into a complicated mass of errors, having the same effect as the spurious figure with which a dishonestly disposed school-boy endeavours to prove a sum that baffles

*Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton.

his feeble powers of calculation. Ay, and it is as easily detected by those who are accustomed to verify history by the tests of dates and documents. It is, however, the doom of every writer who has had the fidelity to bring forward suppressed evidences, or the courage to confute long-established falsehoods, to be assailed, not only by the false but by the deluded, in the same spirit of ignorant prejudice with which Galileo was persecuted by the bigots of a darker age, for having ventured to demonstrate a scientific truth.

What was the result as regarded Galileo and his discoveries? Why, truly, the poor philosopher was compelled to ask pardon for having been the first to call attention to a fact, which it would now be regarded as the extreme of folly to doubt! Neither the clamour of the angry supporters of the old opinion, nor the forced submission of the person who had exposed its fallacy had in the least affected the fact, any more than the assertion that black is white, can make evil good or good evil. Opinions have their date, and change with circumstances, but facts are immutable. We have endeavoured to develop those connected with the biographies of the queens of England with uncompromising fidelity, without succumbing to the passions and prejudices of either sects or parties, the peevish ephemerides of a day, who fret and buzz out their brief term of existence, and are forgotten. It is not for such we write we labour in a high vocation, even that of enabling the lovers of truth and moral justice, to judge of our queens and their attributes-not according to conventional censure or praise, but according to the unerring test, prescribed not by "carnal wisdom, but by heavenly wisdom coming down from above," which has said, “ By their fruits ye shall know them."

We have related the parentage of every queen, described her education, traced the influence of family connexions and national habits on her conduct, both public and private, and given a concise outline of the domestic, as well as the general history of her times, and its effects on her character, and we have done so with singleness of heart, unbiassed by selfish interests or narrow views. If we have borne false witness in any instance, let those who bring accusations bring also proofs of their assertions. A queen is no

ordinary woman, to be condemned on hear-say evidence ; she is the type of the heavenly bride in the beautiful 14th Psalm-"Whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are holy, whatsoever things are pure, and of good report" in the female character, ought to be found in her. A queen regnant occupies a still higher position -she is God's vicegerent upon earth, and is therefore to be held in reverence by his people. In proportion to her power, so are her responsibilities. Of the four queens-regnant, whose lives are narrated in this series of biographies, one only, queen Elizabeth, was possessed of absolute power. Her sister Mary I. had placed herself under the control of a cruel and tyrannical husband,. who filled her council and her palace with his creatures, and rendered her the miserable tool of his constitutional bigotry. The case of the second Mary was not unlike that of the first, as regarded the marital tutelage under which she was crushed. Anne, when she designated herself "A crowned slave," described her position only too accurately.

The Lives of the Tudor and Stuart female sovereigns, form an important portion of this work; there is much that is new to the general reader in each, in the shape of original anecdotes and inedited letters, especially in those of the royal Stuart sisters, Mary II. and queen Anne. The biographies of those princesses, have hitherto been written, either in profound ignorance of their conduct on the part of the writer, or else, the better to work out general principles, in the form of vague outlines full of high-sounding eulogiums, in which all facts were omitted, as if by particular desire, (impressing the disappointed reader with the idea that there was much ado about nothing.) We have endeavoured to supply the blanks, by tracing out their actions, and compelling them to bear witness of themselves by their letters-such letters as they permitted to survive them. Strange mysteries might have been unfolded, if biographers had been permitted to glance over the contents. of those which queen Mary spent a lonely vigil in her closet in destroying, when she felt the dread fiat had gone forth: "Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die, and not live." The great marvel regarding the secret correspondence of royalty at such epochs, is not that so much is destroyed, but that any should survive.

The biographical value of the inedited letters and other important documents, connected with the personal history of our queens, to which we have been so fortunate as to obtain access, through the courtesy of M. Guizot, and other distinguished statesmen and antiquarians, as well as the representatives of the ancient historical families in England and Scotland, has necessarily led to the extension of this work to nearly double the number of volumes at first projected. It is needless to speak of the labour and time expended in making a proper use of such materials. Documentary historians, alone, can appreciate the difficulties, the expense, the injury to health, and the sacrifice of more profitable literary pursuits, that have been involved in these royal biographies. The hope that "The Lives of the Queens of England" may be regarded as a national undertaking, generally useful to society, has encouraged us to persevere to the completion of the task.

Meantime, it appears anything but fair that the fruits of so many years of unremitting labour should be no sooner published, than appropriated by compilers, who, possessing no other information on the subject than the materials derived from these volumes, have put forth mutilated versions of various of our biographies with such verbal alterations, as a due regard to consequences suggested, but without favouring the public with an iota of fresh information.

It is unnecessary to remind our readers, that the Lives of several of the Queens whose memories we have had the honour of rescuing from oblivion, had never before been written; that every biography in these volumes contains much original matter, based on documents to which the parties who have availed themselves of our quotations and deductions, never had access; and that in the progress of the work, we have succeeded in eliciting facts which had escaped the research of our popular historians. Yet these, which formed peculiar and distinctive features in our royal biographies, have been as coolly paraded with the rest of the plunder, by the persons to whom we allude, as if they had themselves traced, verified, and restored those broken and widely scattered links to their proper places in the chain of history; nay, more, in the structure of Lives which had never before been made matter of history.

If the same unscrupulous parties were, in like manner, to

abridge, transpose, and paraphrase the works of any popular writer of fiction, the attempt to impose such fabrications on the world would cover them and their publisher with obloquy, and would be treated, not only as an unfair, but an illegal infringement of literary property. Why should the rights of historians be regarded as less sacred than those of the poet or the novelist ?

A narrative based on facts, more especially facts not previously blended with historic evidences, is no less an original literary production, than a narrative founded on imaginary events. Historians, it is true, expect to be quoted; it is their pride to be cited as faithful witnesses, their delight to supply information ; but quotation and piracy are essentially different.

Some literary pirates there are who plunder the book and attack the author in the same page. Others with greater subtlety, have ostentatiously quoted it for trifles that required no references, while they assumed to themselves the credit of everything that had involved peculiar research, and might therefore be esteemed of value. We have heard of an ingenious appropriator in another line, who politely returned a lady a pin which she had dropped, and while she was curtseying her acknowledgments, took quiet possession of her watch and seals.

But enough of this unpleasant subject. Our readers are fortunately too numerous not to be aware of the use that has been made of our work in every instance where the obscurity of the offender has not concealed the offence.

We have now to repeat our grateful acknowledgments to the noble and learned friends who have assisted us in the previous volumes of the "Lives of the Queens of England," by granting us access to national and family archives, and favouring us with the loan of documents and rare books, besides many other courtesies, which have been continued with unwearied kindness to the conclusion of the work. Nor must we omit this opportunity of returning thanks to our unknown or anonymous correspondents, who have favoured us with transcripts and references, which have, occasionally, proved very useful; and if they have not, in every instance, been either new to us, or available in the course of the work, have always been duly appreciated as friendly attentions, and tokens of good will.