ENGRAVINGS.
| Page | |
| PORTRAIT OF DRAKE | [Frontispiece] |
| PORTRAIT OF HENRY VIII | [16] |
| PORTRAIT OF ANNE BOLEYN | [20] |
| GROUP OF CHRISTENING GIFTS | [25] |
| TOWER OF LONDON | [31] |
| PORTRAIT OF EDWARD VI. | [44] |
| LADY JANE GREY AT STUDY | [63] |
| PORTRAIT OF PHILIP OF SPAIN | [84] |
| ELIZABETH IN THE TOWER | [112] |
| ELIZABETH'S PROGRESS TO LONDON | [135] |
| THE FIRTH OF FORTH, WITH LEITH AND EDINBURGH IN THE DISTANCE | [156] |
| LEICESTER | [169] |
| THE BARGES ON THE RIVER | [182] |
| PORTRAIT OF QUEEN ELIZABETH | [203] |
| THE INVINCIBLE ARMADA | [229] |
| THE HOUSE OF THE EARL OF ESSEX | [242] |
| ELIZABETH IN HER LAST HOURS | [270] |
| HEAD OF JAMES I. | [275] |
| ELIZABETH'S TOMB | [279] |
QUEEN ELIZABETH
Chapter I.
Elizabeth's Mother.
1533-1536
Greenwich.
The hospital.
Its inmates.
Greenwich Observatory.
Manner of taking time.
Travelers, in ascending the Thames by the steamboat from Rotterdam, on their return from an excursion to the Rhine, have often their attention strongly attracted by what appears to be a splendid palace on the banks of the river at Greenwich. The edifice is not a palace, however, but a hospital, or, rather, a retreat where the worn out, maimed, and crippled veterans of the English navy spend the remnant of their days in comfort and peace, on pensions allowed them by the government in whose service they have spent their strength or lost their limbs. The magnificent buildings of the hospital stand on level land near the river. Behind them there is a beautiful park, which extends over the undulating and rising ground in the rear; and on the summit of one of the eminences there is the famous Greenwich Observatory, on the precision of whose quadrants and micrometers depend those calculations by which the navigation of the world is guided. The most unconcerned and careless spectator is interested in the manner in which the ships which throng the river all the way from Greenwich to London, "take their time" from this observatory before setting sail for distant seas. From the top of a cupola surmounting the edifice, a slender pole ascends, with a black ball upon it, so constructed as to slide up and down for a few feet upon the pole. When the hour of 12 M. approaches, the ball slowly rises to within a few inches of the top, warning the ship-masters in the river to be ready with their chronometers, to observe and note the precise instant of its fall. When a few seconds only remain of the time, the ball ascends the remainder of the distance by a very deliberate motion, and then drops suddenly when the instant arrives. The ships depart on their several destinations, and for months afterward when thousands of miles away they depend for their safety in dark and stormy nights, and among dangerous reefs and rocky shores, on the nice approximation to correctness in the note of time which this descending ball had given them.