... her birth was of the morning dew,
    And her conception of the glorious prime.

We recur, as we read, to the grandeur of the Psalmist’s words, as he speaks of the coming of her Lord:  “In the day of thy power shall the people offer thee free-will offerings with a holy worship; the dew of thy birth is of the womb of the morning.”

ELIZABETH.—­In the fifth book a great number of the statistics of contemporary history are found.  A cruel sultan, urged on by an abandoned sultana, is Philip with the Spanish Church.  Mercilla, a queen pursued by the sultan and his wife, is another name for Elizabeth, for he tells us she was

    ... a maiden queen of high renown;
    For her great bounty knowen over all.

Artegal, assuming the armor of a pagan knight, represents justice in the person of Solyman the Magnificent, making war against Philip of Spain.  In the ninth canto of the sixth book, the court of Elizabeth is portrayed; in the tenth and eleventh, the war in Flanders—­so brilliantly described in Mr. Motley’s history.  The Lady Belge is the United Netherlands; Gerioneo, the oppressor, is the Duke of Alva; the Inquisition appears as a horrid but nameless monster, and minor personages occur to complete the historic pictures.

The adventure of Sir Artegal in succor of the Lady Irena, (Erin,) represents the proceedings of Elizabeth in Ireland, in enforcing the Reformation, abrogating the establishments of her sister Mary, and thus inducing Tyrone’s rebellion, with the consequent humiliation of Essex.

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.—­With one more interpretation we close.  In the fifth book, Spenser is the apologist of Elizabeth for her conduct to her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, and he has been very delicate in his distinctions.  It is not her high abstraction of justice, Sir Artegal, who does the murderous deed, but his man Talus, retributive justice, who, like a limehound, finds her hidden under a heap of gold, and drags her forth by her fair locks, in such rueful plight that even Artegal pities her: 

    Yet for no pity would he change the course
      Of justice which in Talus hand did lie,
    Who rudely haled her forth without remorse,
      Still holding up her suppliant hands on high,
      And kneeling at his feet submissively;
    But he her suppliant hands, those hands of gold,
      And eke her feet, those feet of silver try,
    Which sought unrighteousness and justice sold,
    Chopped off and nailed on high that all might them behold.

She was a royal lady, a regnant queen:  her hands held a golden sceptre, and her feet pressed a silver footstool.  She was thrown down the castle wall, and drowned “in the dirty mud.”

“But the stream washed away her guilty blood.”  Did it wash away Elizabeth’s bloody guilt?  No.  For this act she stands in history like Lady Macbeth, ever rubbing her hands, but “the damned spot” will not out at her bidding.  Granted all that is charged against Mary, never was woman so meanly, basely, cruelly treated as she.