281 ART. II.-1. Queen Elizabeth and her Times; a series of original Correspondence. Edited by Thomas Wright, M.A. 2 vols. Colburn. 1838. 2. Private Correspondence of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough: illustrative of the Court and Times of Queen Anne. 2 vols. Colburn. 1838. IT T is scarcely possible to conceive characters more strongly contrasted than those which adorn the Court of Elizabeth, and those which shed a light, little less dazzling, over the Reign of Anne. In the first era, we behold what may be called the flower and consummation of the age of English Chivalry. The class of our Eupatrids, or Well-Born, never before appeared to such advantage. That period in civilization had arrived when the power that belongs to knowledge had passed from the Priesthood into the Aristocracy. The subversion of the mighty Catholic institutions-the annihilation of the Monastic orders, in whose tranquil cloisters were blended the leisure that tempts to study, and the power that allures ambition, severed in a great degree the Nobility from the Church. To the highborn cadet the religious profession no longer proffered stately abbacies-temporal lordships, with the honours of the Roman See the Cardinal's hat-nay, even the Pontiff's triple mitre -rewarding the holy effort, and cheering the pious dream. True, that "great prizes" were yet left-large endowments -haughty prelacies; but the Reformation, which united for awhile the people and the Church, had raised a new class of competitors among the Bourgeiosie, and had given a rude shock to the conventional habits of the Baronial order. The Catholic Church had blended two extremes of society-the sons of the highest nobles, whose habits were too studious or whose bodies were too feeble for the rude career of arms,-and the sons of the humblest citizens (pauperes et indigentes scholares), who found in the cloister those openings to energy and intellect which were denied to them in the profane world. In the heart of Feudal Societies Religion founded a Republic,-an aristocratic one, it is true, in which birth had privileges and priority; but in which no man was condemned to despair of eminence and distinction, who possessed the talents to serve or adorn the community to which his life was devoted. Hence, in those fair and still retreats, the spires of which rose above the loveliest sites of the garden of "merrie England," there existed much of the emulation-the ferment-the aspiration-the struggle the intrigue, which equality of condition and high VOL. XXXI. No. II. U rewards to exertion cannot fail to produce. After the Reformation the Church proffered infinitely less temptation both to the noble and the mere plebeian: the burgher class, then rapidly rising into power, introduced its influences into the new establishment: the Church became more the Church of the middle class; its priesthood was more selected from the families of the smaller gentry-the affluent commercialists; the number of penniless scholars and noble devotees was sensibly diminished. The universities at this epoch changed their character. The families of the Aristocracy thus diverted from one great outlet for the talent or the ambition of their younger sons, they looked abroad, and found that the career of arms was no longer that which it had been in a more barbarous age. Peace in Europe, only partially broken, encouraged travellers, and introduced more humane and graceful adventures than those of the battlefield or the siege. Intercourse with the continent opened to us not only the literature of Italy, then at its palmiest height, but those more material sources of refinement which belong to luxurious habits and the elegancies of art. We may add to this, the consequences of a fact touched upon by M. Guizot, in his Lectures on European Civilization: viz.-"the progressive division of landed property in England during the sixteenth century.Every document proves the prodigious augmentation of landed proprietors." The result of this change, if detrimental to the power, was advantageous to the grace and mental cultivation, of the nobility; they no longer confined themselves to provincial castles, and indulged in barbarous and barren state. Disturbed from their dull feudal pomp, they turned to new openings for distinction-they resorted to the metropolis-they gathered round the monarch-they formed a court. The reign of Elizabeth is the first in which a Court, in the continental signification of the word, as the centre of refinement and art, of power, fashion, and distinction, was called into existence. The sex, the personal accomplishments, and the remarkable talents of the Sovereign, assisted to invest the circles around her with a mingled character both of knightly gallantry and scholastic elegance: while a new class of aristocracy, that of the gentlemen as distinct from the noblemen-who, with all the advantages of birth, had still fortunes to make, rank to win, a career to run-introduced into the microcosm of the Court an element of active and hardy intellect, which was destined to the most grand results. From such a class arose some of the most illustrious representatives of the age-a Burleigh-a Raleigh-a Bacon. The time, just on that verge when the colours of the old world were blended with the new-when chivalry, retaining its splen did attributes, had lost its ferocity and grossness in the air of advancing civilization-was precisely that most favourable to the production of picturesque and poetical groupings of character. While the freedom and activity of thought that were urged into everlasting movement by the Reformation, the invention of printing, the revival of ancient learning, and the prodigious exuberance of practical wisdom and fervent genius which sprung up in the hot-beds of the Italian republics, (as yet but imperfectly awakened in the multitude)-exhibited their first-fruits in embellishing the very systems they were destined to overthrow. In the dainty Quixotism of Sidney, in the sinister and plotting and unscrupulous ambition of Raleigh-nor less in the deep and wily statesmanship of Burleigh, or the courageous philosophy that already inspired the profound mind of the youthful Bacon-were the first meteoric and gorgeous outbreaks and sportings of the electric fire that afterwards burst forth in the storm and thunder of the Civil Wars. The causes that produce poetry and philosophy in the few, produce revolution in the many. The poetry of a people is fanaticism-the scepticism of a people is manifested against governments, not schoolmen-the chivalry of a people finds its tournaments in civil war. The reign of Elizabeth was to the Civil Wars what that of Louis the Fourteenth was to the Revolution. Combined with all the external grace and nobleness that belong to the age of Elizabeth, there was, it is true, a frequent meanness of sentiment-a cringing servility and a calculating self-seeking amongst many of her most dazzling courtiers;attributes and qualities from which perhaps the regions of no despotism, however polished, are exempt, and which are almost necessary characteristics of that era in the progress of states, when an aristocracy loses its haughty independence with its exclusive privileges and semi-royal pomps-and, still shut out from seeking new honours in popular favour, holds glory or disgrace from the smile or frown of a sovereign. Yet, making every abatement which the imperfections of human nature and the condition of the times require, the principal characters of the Elizabethan age stand out, amidst the various groups in the crowded canvas of English history, eminent and radiant, not only with singular accomplishments and many-coloured genius, but with qualities, generous, social, and humane. In the outset of her reign Elizabeth fell into an error, from which her quick sagacity and masculine spirit afterwards preserved her. In the person of Leicester she combined in one the opposite distinctions of the Queen's favourite and the State's |