a' arose very _great
advantages to the public_, by the shifting and bringing to
light as good, perhaps a better and more authentic account of
our nobility, than had been given at that time of those in any
other country of Europe."--p. 1135.

MARTIN MAR-PRELATE.

Of the two prevalent factions in the reign of Elizabeth, the
Catholics and the Puritans--Elizabeth's philosophical indifference
offends both--Maunsell's Catalogue omits the books of both
parties--of the Puritans, "the mild and moderate, with the fierce
and fiery," a great religious body covering a political
one--Thomas Cartwright, the chief of the Puritans, and his rival
Whitgift--attempts to make the Ecclesiastical paramount to the
Civil Power--his plan in dividing the country into comitial,
provincial, and national assemblies, to be concentrated under the
secret head at Warwick, where Cartwright was elected "perpetual
Moderator!"--after the most bitter controversies, Cartwright
became very compliant to his old rival Whitgift, when Archbishop
of Canterbury--of MARTIN MAR-PRELATE--his sons--specimens of their
popular ridicule and invective--Cartwright approves of this mode
of controversy--better counteracted by the wits than by the grave
admonishers--specimens of the ANTI-MARTIN MAR-PRELATES--of the
authors of these surreptitious publications.

The Reformation, or the new Religion, as it was then called, under
Elizabeth, was the most philosophical she could form, and therefore
the most hateful to the zealots of all parties. It was worthy of her
genius, and of a better age! Her sole object was, a deliverance from
the Papal usurpation. Her own supremacy maintained, she designed to be
the great sovereign of a great people; and the Catholic, for some
time, was called to her council-board, and entered with the Reformer
into the same church. But wisdom itself is too weak to regulate human
affairs, when the passions of men rise up in obstinate insurrection.
Elizabeth neither won over the Reformers nor the Catholics. An
excommunicating bull, precipitated by Papal Machiavelism, driving on
the brutalised obedience of its slaves, separated the friends. This
was a political error arising from a misconception of the weakness of
our government; and when discovered as such, a tolerating dispensation
was granted "till better times;" an unhealing expedient, to join again
a dismembered nation! It would