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ELIXIR-ELIZABETH. '

difficulties various methods, more or less satisfactory, the gravity of advanced years. Edward used to have been employed. For several years E. was the chief theocratical counsellor of Jehoram. Under the reign of Jehu and his successors, he gradually withdrew from public affairs, and died in Samaria in the reign of Jeloash, grandson of Jehu (about 840 B. C.). It has been customary to draw a parallel between E. and Christ; and his mildness and gentleness always excepting the story of the destruction of the children at Bethel, which has perplexed all humane readers of Scripture-seem to justify this. E. is canonized in the Greek Church; his day is the 14th of June.

ELIXIR (Lat. elixare, to extract by boiling), a term in pharmacy which has come down from the days of alchemy, and is applied to various preparations consisting mostly of solutions of aromatic and bitter vegetable substances in spirits of wine. The term tincture is now more common. ELIXIR OF VITRIOL, or Aromatic Sulphuric Acid, is prepared from 14 fluid ounces of sulphuric acid (oil of vitriol), 10 fluid ounces of rectified spirit, oz. cinnamon in powder, 1 oz. ginger in powder. The acid is gradually added to the spirit, and the mixture being placed in a closed vessel, is allowed to digest at a gentle heat for three days; the cinnamon and ginger are then added, and after being allowed to stand about six days, the whole is strained through cloth. The elixir of vitriol is useful for quenching thirst, sharpening the appetite, checking profuse perspiration, and often reducing the action of the pulse. The dose may range from 10 to 40 minims, and is administered in a wine-glassful of water, or some mild liquid, as infusion or conserve of roses.-ELIXIR VITE OF MATHIOLUS is composed of alcohol, and upwards of twenty aromatic and stimulating substances, and was at one time administered to patients suffering from epilepsy.

ELIZABETGRAD, a town of South Russia, is situated in the midst of a delightful plain, on the banks of the Ingul, in lat. 48° 27′ N., long. 32° 15′ E., about 130 miles north from Kherson. It consists of a town proper and four suburbs, is well built, its streets straight, wide, and adorned with avenues of trees. E. has a large arsenal within the walls, and is protected by six bastions. A considerable trade is carried on here in the produce of the surrounding districts; and an annual fair is held, which is attended by many thousands of dealers; commerce is also carried on with Poland and Moldavia. In the immediate neighbourhood of the town there are upwards of 30 wind-mills. Great numbers of cavalry are always present in E., as it is the head-quarters of the military colonies east of the river Bug. Pop. in 1867, 31,968.

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ELIZABETH, Queen of England, was the daughter of Henry VIII. and the unfortunate Anne Boleyn, and was born 7th September 1533. While she was yet in her third year, her mother was belicaded. After her mother's execution, she was sent to the country, where, in comparative poverty and seclusion, under the care of ladies who leaned to the new learning,' and sometimes, though seldom, with the companionship of her brother Edward, or her sister Mary, the greater part of her early youth was spent. When Catharine Parr became queen, E., who was a favourite with her, was more seen at court; but from some unknown cause, she incurred her father's displeasure, and was again sent to the country. Her father died when she was twelve years old. During the reign of her brother Edward, her life passed quietly and peacefully. She was then remarkable for a great demur ness and sobriety of manuer, discoursing with her elders with all

speak of her as his 'sweet sister Temperance.' During her sister's reign, this demureness was exaggerated into prudery, and the vanity which, in after-years, with ampler means at its command, displayed itself in the utmost profusion of personal decoration, then sought for distinction by excess of plainness. Her Protestantism, and the way in which court was paid to her by the Protestant nobility, caused uneasiness to Mary and her council. On her sister's command, she conformed to papucy, but the insincerity of the conformity imposed apon no one. Upon the pretext of having beer concerned in Wyatt's rebellion, she was sent in 1554 to the Tower. She entered it with all the gloomy forebodings which the fate of so many royal ladies who had been recently within its walls, could suggest. In daily fear for her Ite, many months passed. Indeed, the warrant for her execution was the stern bigotry of Mary and her councillors, at one time prepared; and it is unquestionable that Gardiner and Bonner, would have sacrificed E., but for the fear of popular commotion. The people, however, regarded E. with great favour, and many already looked forward to the time when the death of Mary should free the court from foreign influence, and give room for a milder government. Thus the life of E. was saved, but for some time longer she was kept a prisoner at Woodstock. During the remainder of Mary's reign, E., though occasionally at court, resided chiefly at her resi dence of Hatfield House, in Hertfordshire, where and the study of classical literature, under the she occupied herself with feminine amusements,

learned Roger Ascham.

When Mary died (17th November 1558), E. was Her accession was twenty-five years of age. former were, outwardly at least, the majority in welcomed alike by Catholic and Protestant. The Mary's reign; but among them there were few who really cared for the peculiar doctrines of the Roman Church, and there were many who were weary of priestly interference, foreign dictation, and cruel persecution. Like E. herself, there were many who had conformed merely to save themselves from trouble. They had obeyed the Six Articles in Henry's time; had agreed to the Protestant settlement of Edward; had turned with Queen Mary, and were now ready to turn again with Queen Elizabeth. The Protestants, of course, who had never believed the sincerity of E.'s conformity, welcomed her to the throne. E. then began, amidst dangers and difficulties, a reign which, contrary to the expectation of all, was of unexampled length and prosperity. It would be wrong not to attribute to her influence some effect in producing the great changes which, during the next forty-four years, took place in England; but so far as these changes were not produced in the natural course of the development of the nation's powers, and so far as they bear the mark of an individual mind, they bear much more the impress of the bold yet cautious judgment and clear intellect of the great minister, Cecil, than of the sovereign's will." It is to the highest praise of E. that her first act on succeeding was to consult with such a man, and that to the very last she could bend her capricious temper to his control.

How the government influence was to be directed, was not long in being shewn. Till parliament should meet, E. iseued a proclamation that the English language should be used in the greater part of the church service, and that the Host should not be elevated by the priest during mass. This suffi ciently indicated into what hands power had passed, and was enough to throw the mass of the indifferent

ELIZABETH.

to the side of the Protestants, and to cause a Protest- afterwards, they. followed the same path. No war ant majority to be returned to E.'s first parlia- was undertaken in her reign for the sake of terri ment. The acts of this parliament must be ever torial conquest. To strengthen her own throne, E memorable in our history. It was then that Eng- secretly succoured the Protestants in Scotland, in land took its position as a Protestant power. The France, and in the Low Countries; but she had few Book of Common Prayer, retaining, doubtless, some open wars. To be at peace with a government, nay, mixture of medieval thought, but still vivid with apparently to be upon the most amicable of terms new energy, was appointed to be used in all with it (as E. was with the French court, while she churches; the Thirty-nine Articles were settled as sent assistance to the Huguenots at Rochelle), and the national faith; the queen was declared to be at the same time to aid its rebellious subjects, was head of the church. Thus all allegiance to Rome in those days thought only part of the politic was thrown off. This revolution was soon accom- dissimulation without which, it was believed, no plished, and with little turmoil. The bishops, with nation could be safely ruled. To maintain the one exception, refused to conform; but as a sign of security of her own throne, and to prevent foreign the times, marking how thoroughly the priesthood interference in English matters, was the mainmust have become demoralised before their power spring of E.'s foreign policy; and she lost no opporwas lost, it is noteworthy that of the 9000 clergy-tunity of weakening and finding occupation abroad men who held livings in England, there were fewer for any foreign power that unduly threatened her than 200 who resigned, rather than obey the new authority. order of things.

The policy of E.'s ministers was one of peace and economy. They found the nation at war with France and Scotland, and one of their first acts was to secure peace upon favourable terms. Ever

The one great blunder of England's policy was the treatment of Mary Queen of Scots. Had E pursued a straightforward course, when her rival was thrown into her hands, much evil might have been spared. Some of the English ministers were

Thizabeth

Fac-simile of Queen Elizabeth's Signature.

prepared to take effectual measures to remove a life which might be turned into so dangerous a tool in the hands of Catholics. E. shrank from that course, but had not the courage and generosity to set Queen Mary at liberty. Had this course been taken, Mary would have gone to France or Spain, would have made a foreign marriage, and as a foreigner would have lost the only sources of her real power-the sympathies of the Scotch and English Catholics. As it was, E. retained her a prisoner, and thus for years gave cause to conspiracy after conspiracy among the English Catholics. For a rebellion incited to set Mary free, the richest and most popular of the English nobility, Norfolk, was executed. The discovery of every new plot led to demands, on the part of parliament, for the execution of Mary. The plots then took a graver aspect. The assassination of E, and the placing of Mary on her throne, became the object. On the dis covery of Babington's conspiracy for this purpose, the popular cry was irresistible, and was joined in by Cecil and Walsingham, and others of E.'s ministers, who had sinned too deeply against Mary to run the risk of her succession to the throne. With reluctance and hesitation, the sincerity of which need not be questioned, E. consented; and Mary, after long years of confinement, was condemned and executed.

This led to new evils. The participation of the Catholic party in the plots was retaliated by perse cution. Many suffered under an act passed in 1585, making it treason for a Catholic priest to be in England, and felony to harbour one. These cruel measures were the ultimate means of bringing upon England the most menacing foreign attack which she had suffered. Philip of Spain had long meditated vengeance against England. The greatest state in Europe, enriched by splendid acquisitions in the New World, could ill brook that a power of the second rank should incite rebellion among her subjects in the Netherlands, should aid the Protestants in their desperate struggle against Alva, and allow its ships (little better than pirates, it must be confessed) to enter the Spanish harbours, and cut out the rich laden galloons. These were the real reasons: to restore the Catholic faith, and to revenge the death of a Catholic queen, furnished ostensible reasons. Years had been spent in preparation. In 1588, the Invincible Armada' sailed from the Tagus, manned by 8000 sailors, and carrying 20,000 soldiers. To aid these, a land-army of 100,000 men was to be transported from the Netherlands under the Duke of Parma. The news roused all England, and every man who could carry arms-Protestant and Catholio from 18 years of age to 60-was enrolled in the forces. The old queen herself rode at Tilbury,

ELIZABETH.

energetically encouraging the army. A fleet of 200 vessels and 15,000 seamen gathered itself on the southern coasts, and waited the attack. Superior skill and courage gained the victory for the English; and what these had begun, the force of the elements completed. The splendid Armada was broken and destroyed before it could join the landarmy, not a soldier of which ever left foreign ground; while not a seaman of the fleet, save those whom shipwrecks sent, ever set foot on English ground.

E. died on 24th March 1603, having lived nearly 70, and reigned nearly 45 years. If the life of her rival, Mary of Scotland, read somewhat like a tragedy, the private life of E. might afford abundant materials for comedy. Always parading her wish to live an unmarried life, E. coquetted with suitor after suitor till long after that period of life when such proposals verge upon the ridiculous. Of her father's schemes to marry her to the Scotch Earl of Arran or to Philip the son of Charles V.--afterwards husband of Mary-it is unnecessary to speak, for E. had personally little to say in regard to them. But she was scarcely more than a child when her flirtations with the handsome Lord Admiral Seymour the brother of the Protector Somerset-had passed the bounds of decorum. In Mary's reign, E. was flattered with the attentions of her kinsman, the Earl of Courtenay, and she declined the hand of Philibert of Savoy, pressed on her by her sister's council. When queen, with some hesitation she refused the offer of Philip II., who was desirous of perpetuating his influence over England, and she began that connection with Leicester, which so seriously compromised her character. It is certain that she loaded him with honours as soon as she had them to bestow; allowed him to become a suitor for her hand within a few days after the sudden death of his wife, Amy Robsart, attributed by all England to his agency; and allowed him to remain a suitor long after his open profligacy had disgusted the nation, and had even opened her own eyes to his worthlessness. If we credit the scandal of the times, the intimacy was of the most discreditable kind. If we credit those sources of information, recently turned to more profit by Mr Froude than by any of his predecessors, which are found in the dispatches of the Bishop of Aquila, ambassador of Philip II. in London, preserved in the archives of Simancas, not only was the moral character of E. sullied with the darkest crimes, but even the quality for which she has ever been most honoured, her English patriotism, was mere affectation. These dispatches represent her as accessory-at least, after the fact to the murder of Amy Robsart, and as offering to Spain to become a Catholic, and to restore the Spanish ascendency in England, if Philip would support her on the throne as the wife of Leicester; and they represent her as being restrained from giving way to the fatal consequences of her wild passion only by Cecil's control. That there is some basis of truth in this revelation, it is scarcely possible to deny; but the hatred with which Philip regarded E., after her refusal to marry him, has undoubtedly led the courtly bishop to gross exaggerations. It is undeniable, however, that had E. followed her own inclinations, she would have married Leicester. Her ministers, wisely for the nation, prevented this, but E. never seriously entertained another proposal. Cecil could prevent her marrying whom he would not, but he could not force her to marry whom he would. Among less distinguished suitors, the Archduke Charles of Vienna, and Prince Eric of Sweden, pressed their suit in vain. Petitions from parliament to the Queen to marry only excitel her maidenly wrath

and produced dignified replies that she would attend to the matter when the time came. Years passed on, and she remained a spinster. Catharine of Medici, queen-mother of France, intrigued to marry her to one of her sons, Henry of Anjou (afterwards Henry III.), or the Duke of Alençon, afterwards Duke of Anjou. When the foreigu envoys pressed the suit of the latter, E. was 38 years of age, and her suitor 19; but they ingeniously flattered her that she and he looked of the same age, for she, by her good preservation, looked nine years younger than she was; while the duke, by his wisdom, gravity, and mature intellect, looked nine years older. This flattery, with more plausible attractions, was without effect. E.'s position gave too much scope for the develop. ment of the unamiable and ridiculous features of her character. The personal vanity displayed in her extravagant dress, her conversation, her high and disposed' dancing, excites a smile, not lessened when we read of the irritable mistress boxing the ears of her councillors, cuffing her attendants, indulging in expressive masculine oaths, and amusing herself with rough masculine sports. The assertion that she was of a cruel disposition is false. That she could do cruel things when ber vanity was concerned is sufficiently attested by her ordering the right hand of a barrister, named Stubbes, to be struck off for writing a remonstrance against her marriage with the Duke of Alençon, which she thought unduly reflected on herself; but in her reign, the reckless waste of human life which marked the reigns of her predecessors was unknown. She was not, however, of tine feelings. Her brother could compliment her on the calm mind and elegant sentences with which she replied to the communication of the death of her father. On the news of her sister's death, she burst out with rhapsodical quotations from the Psalms; and when she heard of the execution of her lover Seymour, she turned away the subject with something like a jest. By her attendants, she was more feared than loved. The one quality which never failed her, was per sonal courage; and when she chose, her demeanour was stately and royal. Religion was with her, as with a great proportion of the nation at that time, a matter more of policy and convenience than of feeling or principle. She preferred Protestantism, from early associations, because it gave her the headship of the church, freed her from foreign interference, and was more acceptable to her ministers and to the nation. But she had conformed in Mary's time to Catholicism with little difliculty; and, had there been necessity for it, she would rather have reigned a Catholic than not have reigned at all. To the last, she retained in her private chapel much of the ritualism of the Roman Church; and while refusing her Catholic subjects the exercise of their religion, she entertained the addresses of Catholic suitors. How thoroughly incapable she was of appreciating a matter of religious principle may be gathered from the fact, that she looked upon the great Puritan movement, destined soon afterwards to play so important a part in the nation's development, as some frivolous controversy about the shape of clerical vestments. Of toleration, then well enough understood by Bacon and the more advanced spirits of the age, she had no conception.

What makes the name of E. so famous, was the splendour of her times. In her long reign, the true greatness of England began. Freed from the possession of those French provinces which rather harassed than enriched-with little domestic commotion-with no great foreign wars-with an almost complete immunity from religious persecution.

ELIZABETH.

the nation turned to the arts of peace. An unequalled literature arose. The age that produced Spenser, Shakspeare, and Bacon, could not be other than famous. Under Frobisher and Drake, maritime adventure began, and the foundations of our naval force were laid. Commerce, from being a small matter in the hands of a few foreign merchants, developed itself largely. The Exchange of London was opened in E.'s time; and in the charter which she granted to that Company of Merchant Adventurers, which afterwards took the name of the East India Company, may be seen

one of the small beginnings of our vast colonial empire. The social condition of the people also greatly improved in her reign. The crowds of vagabonds which the monastic institutions had fostered, and who had pillaged the country in all ways on the secularisation of the monastic property, died out, or were absorbed in industrious employ ments. The last traces of bondage disappeared. Simultaneously with the growth of greater comfort and intelligence in the people, parliament began to assert, with greater vigour, its constitutional rights. The right of the Commons to free speech, and

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mitiate all money bills was steadily asserted; and the right or the Crown to grant monopolies, or to issue proclamations having the force of law, vigorcusly assailed. In the later years of her reign, the attempts of E. to gain arbitrary power, and her caprices, had forfeited the popularity which she 80 anxiously cultivated. But after her death, her fame revived; and during the time of the Stuarts, amid the jealousy of the Scotch, the troubles of the civil wars, and the hatred of a Catholic sovereign, the nation looked back with fond regard to the long reign of the Good Queen Bess, when peace had prevailed, and the government had been thoroughly English.

ELIZABETH, ST, daughter of Andreas II., king of Hungary, was born at Presburg in 1207. At the age of four, she was affianced to the Landgraf of Thuringia, Louis IV., called the Pious, and brought to his court to be edu ated under the eyes of the

parents of her future husband. She early displayed what may be called a passion for the severities of the Christian life, as it was conceived in those days. She despised pomp, avarice, ambition; cultivated humility, and exhibited the most self-denying benevolence. Her conduct, even as a girl, astonished the Thuringian court; but such was the grace and sweetness of her disposition, and the excellence of her beauty, that Louis-though her affections seemed to be given wholly to God-still wished to marry her. They were united when E. was only 14. Louis himself, far from blaming the devout girl whom he had made his wife for her long prayers and ceaseless almsgiving, was himself partially attracted to a similar mode of life. A boy and two girls were the fruit of their union; but the happiness of E., in so far as it depended on anything earthly, was shattered by the death of her husband in 1227, when absent on the crusade headed by Barbarossa. Her confessor

ELIZABETH PETROVNA-ELIZABETH STUART.

Conrad of Marburg, a narrow fanatical monk (to councillor. E., however, did not possess the qualities whose miserable teaching E. mainly owed her requisite in a ruler. She wanted energy, knowledge, perverted idea of life and duty), had trained her to and love of business, and allowed herself to be stifle the emotions of her nature as sinful, and guided by favourites. In order to strengthen her the poor widow hardly dared to bewail her loss. position, E. took pains to win over her nephew, Great misfortunes soon befell her. She was deprived the young prince Peter, the son of her sister, the of her regency by the brother of her deceased Duchess of Holstein-Gottorp. She summoned him husband, and driven out of her dominions on the to Petersburg in the year 1742, and proclaimed him plea that she wasted the treasures of the state by her successor. E. took part in the Austrian War her charities. The inhabitants of Marburg, whose of Succession, and in spite of the opposition of miseries she had frequently relieved, refused her France, despatched an army of 37,000 men to the an asylum, for fear of the new regent. At last she assistance of Maria Theresa, and thereby hastened found refuge in a church, where her first duty was the conclusion of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in to thank God that he had judged her worthy to 1748. E. shewed herself less placable towards Buffer. Subsequently, after other severe privations, Frederick II., against whom she cherished a personal such as being forced to take up her abode in the enmity, excited by some severe expressions he had stable of a hostelry, she was received into the employed respecting her. At the commencement monastery of Kitzingen by the abbess, who was her of the Seven Years' War, she allied herself with aunt. When the warriors who had attended her Austria and France, and marched her troops into husband in the crusade returned from the East, she the Prussian states. Her troops gained the victory gathered them round her, and recounted her suffer- in the battles of Grossjägerndorf and Kunersdorf, ings. Steps were taken to restore to the unfor- and took possession of Berlin, but without any tunate princess her sovereign rights. She declined decisive result. E. died before the expiration of the regency, however, and would only accept the the war, 5th January 1762. She founded the revenues which accrued to her as landgravine. The university of Moscow and the Academy of Art at remainder of her days were devoted to incessant St Petersburg. Though no person was put to death devotions, almsgivings, mortifications, &c. There during her reign, the most shocking punishments is something mournfully sublime in her unnatural were inflicted, and thousands were exiled to Siberia self-sacrifice. We shudder even in our sympathy and Kamtchatka. E had several illegitimate when we read of this beautiful tender-hearted crea- children. Profligacy, espionage, and persecution ture washing the head and the feet of the scrofulous reigned in her court, the administration of justice and the leprous. Murillo has a painting (now in was restrained, and the finances neglected; but E the Museum at Madrid) of this act of evangelical was nevertheless extremely strict in the observance devotion. The solemn tragedy of her brief life of the public ordinances of religion. assumed towards its close a ghastly intensity through the conduct of her confessor, Conrad, who, under pretence of spiritual chastisement, used to strike and maltreat her with brutal severity. The alleged cause of this was Conrad's aversion to her squandering' her money among the poor. Perhaps he thought it should have gone to him. At last her health gave way; and on the 19th November 1231, at the age of 24, E. died, the victim partly of illusage and partly of a mistaken theory of religious life, but as gentle and saintly a soul as figures in the history of the middle ages. She was canonised four years after her death. See Montalembert's Histoire de Sainte Elisabeth de Hongrie (Paris, 1836). The Rev. Charles Kingsley's dramatic poem, entitled The Saint's Tragedy (London, 1848), is founded on the story of E.'s life.

ELIZABETH PETROVNA, Empress of Russia, daughter of Peter the Great and Catharine I., was born in the year 1709. On the death of Peter II. in 1780, she allowed Anna, Duchess of Courland, to ascend the throne, she herself being apparently indifferent to anything but the indulgence of her passions. Anna died in 1740, and Ivan, the son of her niece (also called Anna), an infant of two months, was declared emperor, and his mother regent during his minority. Shortly after this, a plot was formed to place E upon the throne; the two principal agents in it were Lestocq, a surgeon, and the Marquis de la Chetardie, the French ambassador. The officers of the army were soon won over; and on the night of the 5th December 1741, the regent and her husband were taken into custody, and the child Ivan conveyed to Schlüsselburg. The leading adherents of Anna were condemned to death, but pardoned on the scaffold, and exiled to Siberia. By eight o'clock in the morning, the revolution was completed, and in the afternoon all the troops did homage to the new empress. La Chetarde was handsomely rewarded; and Lestocq was created first physician to the empress, President of the College of Medicine, and privy

ELIZABETH STUART, Queen of Bohemia, remarkable not only as a heroine, but as forming the connecting link between the ancient royal families of England and Scotland and the present reigning dynasty, was born in the palace of Falkland (q. v.) on the 19th of August 1596. On the accession of her father, James VI. of Scotland, to the crown which fell to him by the demise of Queen Elizabeth, in 1603, she accompanied the family to England, where she was educated. On the 14th c February 1613, E. was married to Frederick, Elector Palatine, whom she soon after accompanied to his residence, the castle of Heidelberg (q. v.); see also PALATINATE. When the Protestant princes of Germany sought for a fitting person to fill the throne of Bohemia, they made choice of Frederick, who accepted the perilous honour, partly, perhaps, from the ambition of his wife, who is alleged to have longed for the title of queen. The Palatine removed with E. and three children to Prague, which they entered, October 21, 1619. Frederick and E. occupied the throne of Bohemia only about a year. By the forces of the Catholic League, the army of Frederick was routed at the battle of Prague, November 8, 1620, and the royal family fed into exile, for already the Palatinate was laid waste. With her husband and children, and a few faithful attendants, E. took up her residence at the Hague, and ever afterwards the family lived in a state of dependence. E. was the mother of thirteen chil dren, the eldest of whom was accidentally drowned in Holland, and three others died young. The next were Charles-Louis and Rupert, and, following in order, were Elizabeth, Maurice, Edward, Philip, Louisa, Henrietta-Maria, and Sophia. From this numerous offspring, E. derived little comfort in her misfortunes. Charles-Louis was a selfish, calculat ing person, with low, disreputable habits. Rupert (q. v.), the mad cavalier,' and his brother, Maurice. fought in England during the civil war, and, ater the loss of the royalist cause at the battle of Naseby, they betook themselves to the sea and for

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