even in far away Persia we find an unusual
degree of intellectual activity.

The England of Shakspere! The phrase suggests a train of associations
that kindle the imagination. The age of literature, war, conquest,
adventure, and achievement. The era of Edmund Spenser, "called from
faeryland to struggle 'gainst dark ways;" of Sir Philip Sidney, the
scholar, the courtier, the gentleman; of Sir Walter Raleigh, author,
knight, and explorer; of Bacon, "the wisest, meanest, brightest of
mankind." It is the time when in the _Golden Hind_ Drake is
circumnavigating the globe; when Hawkins is exploring the Indies, and
Frobisher is becoming the hero of the Northwest passage; the age of
marvelous tales told by intrepid explorers and adventurers returning
from America, a land whose fountains renewed youth and whose rivers
flowed over sands of gold. It is the era of English sea-dogs pillaging
Spanish provinces in spite of imperial manifestos,--above all, it is
the age of the Spanish Armada.

To recall what this means it is necessary to remember that Spain was
the great dominating empire of the sixteenth century. Philip II, the
Duke of Alva, the horrors of the Spanish inquisition, condemn Spain's
power in this period. But one midsummer morn all England awoke to the
glorious news that the Invincible Armada lay at the bottom of the sea.
England had triumphed, and now for the first time national life
dreamed of the possibility of leadership in the great game of
world-politics. The atmosphere was electric with new life. In rural
England along lanes flanked with green hedges Englishmen walked with
bosoms swelling with new pride, in bustling London vigorous burghers
strode the city's streets with hearts pulsating with new warmth, and
everywhere the eyes of all Englishmen flashed with new fire.

Could a soul so sensitive as Shakspere's live in such an atmosphere
and not be influenced by it? Listen to him as he pays his beautiful,
patriotic tribute to England's national glory:

This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world.

And the second cause, we say, is the personality of the man himself.
Shakspere wrote pure and lofty poetry because his was a pure and lofty
nature. I know the disparagers