eature in the domestic architecture of the time, and
one whose influence on the general health of the people can hardly be
overrated. Long lines of windows stretched over the fronts of the new
manor halls. Every merchant's house had its oriel. "You shall have
sometimes," Lord Bacon grumbled, "your houses so full of glass, that we
cannot tell where to come to be out of the sun or the cold."

[Sidenote: Elizabeth and English order.]

What Elizabeth contributed to this upgrowth of national prosperity was
the peace and social order from which it sprang. While autos-de-fe were
blazing at Rome and Madrid, while the Inquisition was driving the sober
traders of the Netherlands to madness, while Scotland was tossing with
religious strife, while the policy of Catharine secured for France but a
brief respite from the horrors of civil war, England remained untroubled
and at peace. Religious order was little disturbed. Recusants were few.
There was little cry as yet for freedom of worship. Freedom of
conscience was the right of every man. Persecution had ceased. It was
only as the tale of a darker past that men recalled how ten years back
heretics had been sent to the fire. Civil order was even more profound
than religious order. The failure of the northern revolt proved the
political tranquillity of the country. The social troubles from vagrancy
and evictions were slowly passing away. Taxation was light. The country
was firmly and steadily governed. The popular favour which had met
Elizabeth at her accession was growing into a passionate devotion. Of
her faults indeed England beyond the circle of her court knew little or
nothing. The shiftings of her diplomacy were never seen outside the
royal closet. The nation at large could only judge her foreign policy by
its main outlines, by its temperance and good sense, and above all by
its success. But every Englishman was able to judge Elizabeth in her
rule at home, in her love of peace, her instinct of order, the firmness
and moderation of her government, the judicious spirit of conciliation
and compromise among warring factions which gave the country an
unexampled tranquillity at a time when almost every other country in
Europe was torn with civil war. Every sign of the growing prosperity,
the sight of London as it became the mart of the world, of stately
mansions as they rose on every manor, told, and justly told, in the
Queen's favour. Her statue in the centre of the London Exchange w