of the great barons, and of the new disposition of landed property; the gentry, the flourishing agriculturist, and those mechanics and artificers who carried on their trades, independently of their former lordly patrons ; we now, therefore, discern the first elements of popularity.

There was now "a people," who might be worthy of entering into the views of the statesman; but it was a divided people. Among them, the queen knew, lay concealed her domestic enemies; a more novel religion than the new was on the watch to shake her established church; and no inconsiderable portion of her subjects in their papal consciences were traitors. The arts of juncture, or the keeping together parts broken and separated, making hearts compliant which were stubbornly opposed to each other, demanded at once the firmness and the indulgence of the wisest policy; and such was the administration of Elizabeth. A reign of continued struggle, which extended to nearly half a century, was a probationary period for royalty; and a precarious throne, while it naturally approximated the sovereign to the people, also taught the nation its own capacities, by maintaining their monarch's glory amid her external and internal enemies.

The nobility was to feel the weight of the royal prerogative; no noble families were permitted to intermarry, and no peer could leave the kingdom, without the license of the queen. But at the very time she was ruling them with a potent hand, Elizabeth courted the eyes and the hearts of "the people;" she sought every occasion to exhibit her person in processions and progresses, and by her speech and manner shed her graciousness on the humblest of her subjects. Not slow to perceive their wants and wishes, she it was who first gave the people a theatre, as her royal style expressed it, "for the recreation of our loving subjects,

as for our solace and pleasure ;" and this at a time when her council were divided in their opinion.

Participating in the inmost feelings of the people, she commanded that the awful tomes of Fox's "Acts and Monuments," a book written, as the author himself expressed it, for "the simple people," should be chained to the desk of every church and common hall In this Book of Martyrs, gathered from all quarters, and chronicling the obscurest individuals, many a reader, kindling over the lengthened page, dwelt on his own domestic tale in the volume of the nation. These massy volumes were placed easy of access for perpetual reference, and doubtless their earnest spirit multiplied Protestants.

No object which concerned the prosperity of the people but the Queen identified herself with it; she saluted Sir Thomas Gresham as her "royal merchant," and opening with her presence his Exchange, she called it Royal. It is a curious evidence of her system to win over the people's loyalty, that she suggested to Sir Thomas Wilson to transfuse the eloquence of Demosthenes into the language of the people, to prepare them by such solemn admonitions against the machinations of her most dreaded enemy. Our translator reveals the design by his title: "The Three Orations of Demosthenes, with those his fower Orations titled expressly and by name against King Philip of Macedonie, most needful to be redde in these dangerous dayes, of all them that love their countrie's libertie."* The queen considered the aptness of their application, and the singular felicity of transferring the inordinate ambition of Philip of Macedon to Philip of Spain. To these famous

* Imprinted at London by Henrie Denham, quarto, without date; but the dedication to Sir William Cecil is dated 1570; nearly twenty years after Sir Thomas Wilson's first publications "On Logic," and "On Rhetoric."

VOL. II.-2

"philippics" was prefixed the solemn oath that the young men of Greece took to defend their country against the royal invader, "at this time right needful for all Christians, not only for Englishmen, to observe and follow."

It was not until eighteen years after that the Armada sailed from the shores of Spain, and this translation perpetuates an instance of political foresight.

The genius of Elizabeth created her age; surrounding herself by no puny favorites of an hour, in the circles of her royalty were seen the most laborious statesmen our annals record, and a generation of romantic commanders; the secretaries of state were eminently learned; and the queen was all these herself, in her tried prudence, her dauntless intrepidity, and her lettered accomplishments. The energies of the sovereign reached the people, and were responded to; the spirit-stirring events rose with the times; it was a reign of enterprise and emulation, a new era of adventure and glory. The heroes of England won many a day's battle in the Netherlands, in France, in Spain, and in Portugal; and the ships of England unfurled their flags in unknown seas, and left the glory of the maiden queen in new lands.

It would be no slight volume which should contain the illustrious names of a race of romantic adventurers, who lost their sleep to gain new trophies in a campaign, to settle a remote colony, or to give a name to a new continent. All ranks of society felt the impulse of the same electrical stroke, and even the cupidity of the mere trader was elevated into heroism, and gained a patent of heraldry.* The spirits of that age seemed

* In Sylvanus Morgan's "Sphere of Gentry," lib iii., c. 9, is one of those patents of heraldry, granted to William Tollerson, a merchant of London, that his honors may be fitly conveyed to his offspring. He had fought and conquered in Africa - destroyed a small navy of "the Portugals," with whom he made attempt to league; and bore for his crest a demi-negro, in proper color, prepared to the conflict, with dart and pavice, gold — and a ship, sable, with all its equipage,

busied with day-dreams, of discovering a new people, or founding a new kingdom. Shakespeare alludes to this passion of the times:

"Some to the wars to try their fortune there;

Some to discover islands far away."

If our Drake was considered by the Spaniard as the most terrible of pirates, in England he was admired as another Columbus. The moral feeling may sometimes be more justly regulated by the degree of latitude. The Norrises, the Veres, the Grenvilles, the Cavendishes, the Earl of Cumberland, and the Sidneys, bear a lustre in their characters which romance has not surpassed; and many there were as resolutely ambitious as Sir John Davies, who has left his name to the Straits still bearing it. Sir Henry Sidney, the father of Sir Philip, who became a distinguished statesman, had once designed to raise a new kingdom in America; and his romantic son resumed this design of founding an empire for the Sidneys. The project was secretly planned between our puerile hero and the adventurous Drake, and was only frustrated by the queen's arrest of her hero at Plymouth. Of the same batch of kingdomfounders was Sir Walter Rawleigh; he baptised with the spirit of loyalty his "Virginia." Muscovy, at that stirring period, was a dominion as strange as America and the Indies; during the extraordinary events of this period, when Elizabeth had obtained a monopoly of the trade of that country, the czar proposed to marry an English lady: a British alliance, both personal and political, he imagined, should his subjects revolt, might secure an asylum in the land of his adoption. The daughter of the Earl of Huntington was actually selected by the queen to be the czarina; but her ladyship was so terrified at the Muscovite and his icy region, that she lost the honor of being a romantic emperess, and the civiliser of all the Russias. Thus, wherever

the winds blew, the name of Elizabeth was spread; "the great globe itself" seemed to be our "inheritance," and seemed not too vast a space to busy the imaginations of the people.

This was the time of first beginnings in the art of guiding public opinion. Ample volumes, like those of Fox, powerful organs of the feelings of the people, were given to them. The Chronicles of Hall and Holinshed opened for them the glory of the love of their fatherland. It was the genius of this active age of exploits which inspired RICHARD HAKLUYT to form one of the most remarkable collections in any language, yet it was solely to be furnished from our own records, and the mighty actors in the face of the universe were solely to be Englishmen. Now appeared the three tomes of "The principal Navigations, Voyages, and Discoveries, made by the English Nation;" northward, southward, and westward, and at last, "the new found world of America ;" a world, with both Indies, discovered within their own century! These amazed and delighted all classes of society. The legendary voyages of the monkish chroniclers, their maritime expeditions, opening with the fabulous Arthur, hardly exceeded the simplicity of of our first discoverers. Many a hero had led on the adventurers; but their secretaries and historians were often themselves too astonished at what they witnessed, and stayed too short a time, to recover their better judgment in new places, and among new races of men. Sanctioned by many noble and genuine adventures, not less authentic appeared their terrors and their wonder; in polar icebergs, or before that island which no ship could approach, wherein devils dwelt; or among the sunny isles of Greece, and the burning regions of Ormus and Malacca, and the far realms of Cambaya and Cathay; in Ethiopia and in Muscovy, in Persia and in Peru; on the dark coast of Guinea, and beyond in Africa; and in Virginia, with her feathered chiefs; with many a tale of Tripol