in the reach of the
poorest plebeian who had the stuff in him to perform
them. Alone, of all the sovereigns in Europe, Elizabeth
saw the change which had passed over the world. She
saw it, and saw it in faith, and accepted it. The
England of the Catholic Hierarchy and the Norman Baron,
was to cast its shell and to become the England of free
thought and commerce and manufacture, which was to
plough the ocean with its navies, and sow its colonies
over the globe; and the first thunder birth of these
enormous forces and the flash of the earliest achievements of
the new era roll and glitter through the forty years of the
reign of Elizabeth with a grandeur which, when once its
history is written, will be seen to be among the most
sublime phenomena which the earth as yet has witnessed.
The work was not of her creation; the heart of the
whole English nation was stirred to its depths; and
Elizabeth's place was to recognize, to love, to foster,
and to guide. The government originated nothing;
at such a time it was neither necessary nor desirable
that it should do so; but wherever expensive enterprises
were on foot which promised ultimate good, but no
immediate profit, we never fail to find among the lists
of contributors the Queen's Majesty, Burleigh, Leicester,
Walsingham. Never chary of her presence, for Elizabeth
could afford to condescend, when ships were fitting for
distant voyages in the river, the Queen would go down
in her barge and inspect. Frobisher, who was but a
poor sailor adventurer, sees her wave her handkerchief
to him from the Greenwich Palace windows, and he
brings her home a narwhal's horn for a present. She
honoured her people, and her people loved her; and
the result was that, with no cost to the government,
she saw them scattering the fleets of the Spaniards,
planting America with colonies, and exploring the most
distant seas. Either for honour or for expectation of
profit, or from that unconscious necessity by which a
great people, like a great man, will do what is right, and
must do it at the right time, whoever had the means to
furnish a ship, and whoever had the talent to command
one, laid their abilities together and went out to pioneer,
and to conquer, and take possession, in the name of
the Queen of the Sea. There was no nation so remote
but what some one or other was found ready to undertake
an expedition there, in the hope of opening a trade;
and let them go where they would, they were sure