A Child's History of England.161

Elizabeth had been Queen three years, when Mary Queen of Scots embarked at Calais for her own rough, quarrelling country. As she came out of the harbour, a vessel was lost before her eyes, and she said, 'O! good God! what an omen [征兆] this is for such a voyage!' She was very fond of France, and sat on the deck, looking back at it and weeping, until it was quite dark. When she went to bed, she directed to be called at daybreak, if the French coast were still visible, that she might behold [see] it for the last time. As it proved to be a clear morning, this was done, and she again wept for the country she was leaving, and said many times, 'Farewell, France! Farewell, France! I shall never see thee [you] again!' All this was long remembered afterwards, as sorrowful and interesting in a fair young princess of nineteen. Indeed, I am afraid it gradually came, together with her other distresses, to surround her with greater sympathy than she deserved.

When she came to Scotland, and took up her abode [住所] at the palace of Holyrood in Edinburgh, she found herself among uncouth [粗野的] strangers and wild uncomfortable customs very different from her experiences in the court of France. The very people who were disposed [想] to love her, made her head ache when she was tired out by her voyage, with a serenade [小夜曲] of discordant music - a fearful concert of bagpipes, I suppose - and brought her and her train [随员] home to her palace on miserable little Scotch horses that appeared to be half starved. Among the people who were not disposed to love her, she found the powerful leaders of the Reformed Church, who were bitter upon her amusements [见不得她娱乐], however innocent, and {they} denounced music and dancing as works of the devil. John Knox himself often lectured her, violently and angrily, and did much to make her life unhappy. All these reasons confirmed her old attachment to the Romish religion, and caused her, there is no doubt, most imprudently [not wise] and dangerously both for herself and for England too, to give a solemn pledge to the heads of the Romish Church that if she ever succeeded to the English crown, she would set up that religion again. In reading her unhappy history, you must always remember this; and also that during her whole life she was constantly put forward against the Queen, in some form or other, by the Romish party.

That Elizabeth, on the other hand, was not inclined to like her, is pretty certain. Elizabeth was very vain [自负的] and jealous, and had an extraordinary dislike to people being married. She treated Lady Catherine Grey, sister of the beheaded Lady Jane, with such shameful severity, for no other reason than her being secretly married, that she died and her husband was ruined; so, when a second marriage for Mary began to be talked about, probably Elizabeth disliked her more. Not that Elizabeth wanted suitors of her own, for they started up from Spain, Austria, Sweden, and England. Her English lover at this time, and one whom she much favoured too, was Lord Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester - himself secretly married to Amy Robsart, the daughter of an English gentleman, whom he was strongly suspected of causing to be murdered, down at his country seat [place], Cumnor Hall in Berkshire, that he might be free to marry the Queen. Upon this story, the great writer {sarcasm}, Sir Walter Scott, has founded one of his best romances. But if Elizabeth knew how to lead her handsome favourite on, for her own vanity and pleasure, she knew how to stop him for her own pride; and his love, and all the other proposals, came to nothing. The Queen always declared in good set [fixed] speeches, that she would never be married at all, but would live and die a Maiden Queen. It was a very pleasant and meritorious [值得称赞的] declaration, I suppose; but it has been puffed and trumpeted [吹捧] so much, that I am rather tired of it myself.

The Big Bad Wolf huffed and puffed.

Sir Walter Scott - British author of historical novels and ballads (1771-1832); Charles Dickens - English writer whose novels depicted and criticized social injustice (1812-1870).

六级/考研单词: embark, quarrel, harbor, vessel, voyage, fond, deck, weep, farewell, sorrow, princess, gradual, distress, sympathy, disposition, ache, tire, discord, wretched, starve, potent, reform, amuse, innocent, denounce, devil, seldom, solemn, pledge, incline, vain, jealous, dislike, gray, shame, ruin, probable, sarcasm, romance, handsome, maiden, trumpet, wolf, author, depict