Save us, as chickens under the hen;
Our crookedness thou canst make right--
Glory to thee for aye. Amen.

The apprehensions of the wiser part of the nation have generally been
ahead of its hopes. Every age is born with an ideal; but instead of
beholding that ideal in the future where it lies, it throws it into the
past. Hence the lapse of the nation must appear tremendous, even when she
is making her best progress.




CHAPTER V.

SPENSER AND HIS FRIENDS.


We have now arrived at the period of English history in every way fullest
of marvel--the period of Elizabeth. As in a northern summer the whole
region bursts into blossom at once, so with the thought and feeling of
England in this glorious era.

The special development of the national mind with which we are now
concerned, however, did not by any means arrive at its largest and
clearest result until the following century. Still its progress is
sufficiently remarkable. For, while everything that bore upon the mental
development of the nation must bear upon its poetry, the fresh vigour
given by the doctrines of the Reformation to the sense of personal
responsibility, and of immediate relation to God, with the grand