t is
greatly to her credit, however, that she retained the services of this
old statesman for forty years, and that she filled the great offices in
the State and Church with men of experience, genius, and wisdom. She
made Parker the Archbishop of Canterbury,--a man of remarkable
moderation and breadth of mind, whose reforms were carried on without
exciting hostilities, and have survived the fanaticisms and hostile
attacks of generations. Walsingham, her ambassador at Paris, and
afterwards her secretary of state, ferreted out the plots of the Jesuits
and the intrigues of hostile courts, and rendered priceless service by
his acuteness and diligence. Lord Effingham, one of the Howards,
defeated the "Invincible Armada." Sir Thomas Gresham managed her
finances so ably that she was never without money. Coke was her
attorney. Sir Nicholas Bacon--the ablest lawyer in the realm, and a
stanch Protestant--was her lord-keeper; while his illustrious son, the
immortal Francis Bacon, though not adequately rewarded, was always
consulted by the Queen in great legal difficulties. I say nothing of
those elegant and gallant men who were the ornaments of her court, and
in some instances the generals of her armies and admirals of her
navies,--Sackville, Raleigh, Sidney, not to mention Essex and
Leicester, all of whom were distinguished for talents and services; men
who had no equals in their respective provinces; so gifted that it is
difficult to determine whether the greatness of her reign was more owing
to the talents of the ministers or to the wisdom of the Queen herself.
Unless she had been a great woman, I doubt whether she would have
discerned the merits of these men, and employed them in her service and
kept them so long in office.

It was by these great men that Elizabeth was ruled,--so far as she was
ruled at all,--not by favorites, like her successors, James and Charles.
The favorites at the court of Elizabeth were rarely trusted with great
powers unless they were men of signal abilities, and regarded as such by
the nation itself. While she lavished favors upon them,--sometimes to
the disgust of the old nobility,--she was never ruled by them, as James
was by Buckingham, and Louis XV. by Madame de Pompadour. Elizabeth was
not above coquetry, it is true; but after toying with Leicester and
Raleigh,--never, though, to the serious injury of her reputation as a
woman,--she would retire to the cabinet of her ministers and yield to
the s