prosperity, amid differences in religion, the troubles of neighboring
nations, the ambition of Spain, and the opposition of Home, I could not
have chosen a more remarkable combination of learning in the prince with
felicity of the people."

I can add nothing to this comprehensive verdict: it covers the whole
ground. So that for virtues and abilities, in spite of all defects, I
challenge attention to this virgin queen. I love to dwell on her
courage, her fortitude, her prudence, her wisdom, her patriotism, her
magnanimity, her executive ability, and, more, on the exalted services
she rendered to her country and to civilization. These invest her name
with a halo of glory which shall blaze through all the ages, even as the
great men who surrounded her throne have made her name illustrious.

The Elizabethan era is justly regarded as the brightest in English
history; not for the number of its great men, or the magnificence of its
great enterprises, or the triumphs of its great discoveries and
inventions, but because there were then born the great ideas which
constitute the strength and beauty of our proud civilization, and
because then the grandest questions which pertain to religion,
government, literature, and social life were first agitated, with the
freshness and earnestness of a revolutionary age. The men of that period
were a constellation of original thinkers. We still point with
admiration to the political wisdom of Cecil, to the sagacity of
Walsingham, to the varied accomplishments of Raleigh, to the chivalrous
graces of Sidney, to the bravery of Hawkins and Nottingham, to the bold
enterprises of Drake and Frobisher, to the mercantile integrity and
financial skill of Gresham, to the comprehensive intellect of Parker, to
the scholarship of Ascham, to the eloquence of Jewel, to the profundity
of Hooker, to the vast attainments and original genius of Bacon, to the