spirit of the great British nation; abhorring the
Puritans--that is to say, one-third of his subjects--in whose harsh, but
lofty nature he felt instinctively that popular freedom was
enfolded--even as the overshadowing tree in the rigid husk--and sending
them forth into the far distant wilderness to wrestle with wild beasts
and with savages more ferocious than beasts; fearing and hating the
Catholics as the sworn enemies of his realm; his race, and himself,
trampling on them as much as he dared, forcing them into hypocrisy to
save themselves from persecution or at least pecuniary ruin--if they
would worship God according to their conscience; at deadly feud,
therefore, on religious grounds, with much more than half his
subjects--Puritans or Papists--and yet himself a Puritan in dogma and a
Papist in Church government, if only the king could be pope; not knowing,
indeed, whether a Puritan, or a Jesuit whom he called a Papist-Puritan,
should be deemed the more disgusting or dangerous animal; already
preparing for his unfortunate successor a path to the scaffold by
employing all the pedantry, both theological and philosophical at his
command to bring parliaments into contempt, and to place the royal
prerogative on a level with Divinity; at the head of a most martial,
dauntless, and practical nation, trembling, with unfortunate physical
timidity, at the sight of a drawn sword; ever scribbling or haranguing in
Latin, French, or broad Scotch, when the world was arming, it must always
be a special wonder that one who might have been a respectable; even a
useful, pedagogue, should by the caprice of destiny have been permitted,
exactly at that epoch to be one of the most contemptible and mischievous
of kings.

But he had a most effective and energetic minister. Even as in Spain and
in France at the same period, the administration of government was
essentially in-one pair of hands.

Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, ever since the termination of the
splendid triumvirate of his father and Walsingham, had been in reality
supreme. The proud and terrible hunchback, who never forgave, nor forgot
to destroy, his enemies, had now triumphed over the last passion of the
doting queen. Essex had gone to perdition.

Son of the great minister who had brought the mother of James to the
scaffold, Salisbury had already extorted forgiveness for that execution
from the feeble king. Before Elizabeth was in her grave, he was already
as much the fa