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 of Elizabeth's countenance. We find letters
written by her, for the benefit of nameless adventurers, to every
potentate of whom she had ever heard--to the Emperors of China, Japan,
and India, the Grand Duke of Russia, the Grand Turk, the Persian
'Sofee,' and other unheard-of Asiatic and African princes; whatever was
to be done in England, or by Englishmen, Elizabeth assisted when she
could, and admired when she could not. The springs of great actions are
always difficult to analyse--impossible to analyse perfectly--possible
to analyse only very proximately; and the force by which a man throws a
good action out of himself is invisible and mystical, like that which
brings out the blossom and the fruit upon the tree. The motives which
we find men urging for their enterprises seem often insufficient to have
prompted them to so large a daring. They did what they did from the
great unrest in them which made them do it, and what it was may be best
measured by the results in the present England and America.

Nevertheless, there was enough in the state of the world, and in the
position of England, to have furnished abundance of conscious motive,
and to have stirred the drowsiest minister of routine.

Among material occasions for exertion, the population began to outgrow
the employment, and there was a necessity for plantations to serve as an
outlet. Men who, under happier circumstances, might have led decent
lives, and done good service, were now driven by want to de