He explained how Elizabeth's motto, semper eadem, had in his mind come to be associated with the homogeneity of stone, on the one hand, and the sempiternities of the Golden Age, on the other. Whereas Mary Queen of Scots's motto, eadem mutata resurgam, I shall arise, the same transmuted, he felt was Christian and much less rock-like that Elizabeth's pagan reliance on her own eternal identity.
The Virgin in the Garden by A.S. Byatt