in the minds
of men.

Elizabeth, with such a constellation around her, had no great difficulty
in re-establishing Protestantism and giving it a new impetus, although
she adhered to liturgies and pomps, and loved processions and fetes and
banquets and balls and expensive dresses,--a worldly woman, but
progressive and enlightened.

In the religious reforms of that age you see the work of princes and
statesmen still, rather than any great insurrection of human
intelligence or any great religious revival, although the germs of it
were springing up through the popular preachers and the influence of
Genevan reformers. Calvin's writings were potent, and John Knox was on
his way to Scotland.

I pass by rapidly the reforms of Elizabeth's reign, effected by the
Queen and her ministers and the convocation of Protestant bishops and
clergy and learned men in the universities. Oxford and Cambridge were
then in their glory,--crowded with poor students from all parts of
England, who came to study Greek and Latin and read theology, not to
ride horses and row boats, to put on dandified airs and sneer at
lectures, running away to London to attend theatres and flirt with girls
and drink champagne, beggaring their fathers and ruining their own
expectations and their health. In a very short time after the accession
of Elizabeth, which was hailed generally as a very auspicious event,
things were restored to nearly the state in which they were left by
Cranmer in the preceding reign. This was not done by direct authority of
the Queen, but by acts of Parliament. Even Henry VIII. ruled through the
Parliament, only it was his tool and instrument. Elizabeth consulted its
wishes as the representation of the nation, for she aimed to rule by the
affections of her people. But she recommended the Parliament to
conciliatory measures; to avoid extremes; to drop offensive epithets,
like "papist" and "heretic;" to go as far as the wants of the nation
required, and no farther. Though a zealous Protestant, she seemed to
have no great animosities. Her particular aversion was Bonner,--the
violent, blood-thirsty, narrow-minded Bishop of London, who was deprived
of his see and shut up in the Tower, put out of harm's way, not cruelly
treated,--he was not even deprived of his good dinners. She appointed,
as her prerogative allowed, a very gentle, moderate, broad, kind-hearted
man to be Archbishop of Canterbury,--Parker, who had been chaplain to
her mother, and