hen this became known, the outburst of patriotic
feeling was so intense among all classes in England that the queen did
not hesitate to put Lord Howard, a Catholic, in command of the English
fleet. The Armada was utterly defeated, and England was free to enter
on her glorious period of influencing the thought and action of the
world.

In brief, Elizabeth's reign was remarkable for the rise of the middle
classes, for the growth of manufactures, for the appearance of English
ships in almost all parts of the world, for the extension of commerce,
for greater freedom of thought and action, for what the world now
calls Elizabethan literature, and for the ascendancy of a great mental
and moral movement to which we must next call attention.

Culmination of the Renaissance and the Reformation.--We have seen
that the Renaissance began in Italy in the fourteenth century and
influenced the work of Chaucer. In the same century, Wycliffe's
influence helped the cause of the Reformation. Elizabethan England
alone had the good fortune to experience the culmination of these two
movements at one and the same time. At no other period and in no other
country have two forces, like the Renaissance and the Reformation,
combined at the height of their ascendancy to stimulate the human
mind. One result of these two mighty influences was the work of
William Shakespeare, which speaks to the ear of all time.

The Renaissance, having opened the gates of knowledge, inspired the
Elizabethans with the hope of learning every secret of nature and of
surmounting all difficulties. The Reformation gave man new freedom,
imposed on him the gravest individual responsibilities, made him
realize the importance of every act of his own will, and emphasized
afresh the idea of the stewardship of this present life, for which he
would be held accountable. In Elizabethan days, these two forces
cooeperated; in the following Puritan age they were at war.

Some Characteristics of Elizabethan Life.--It became an ambition to
have as many different experiences as possible, to search for that
variety craved by youth and by a youthful age. Sir Walter Raleigh was
a courtier, a writer, a warden of the tin mines, a vice admiral, a
captain of the guard, a colonizer, a country gentleman, and a pirate.
Sir Philip Sidney, who died at the age of thirty-two, was an envoy to
a foreign court, a writer of romances, an officer in the army, a poet
and a courtier. Shakespeare left the li