in the back-alley of bigotry and
bloated ignorance.

People began to think and wonder how they had been bamboozled for centuries
by a set of educated harlequins, who, in all lands and climes exhibited
their antics and nostrums for the delectation and digestion of infatuated
fools! Millions yet living!

Queen Elizabeth's elevation to the throne of England was a bid for the
banished and persecuted Protestants to return from foreign lands and again
pursue their puritanical philosophy.

Pope Paul demanded of Elizabeth that all the church lands, monasteries and
cathedrals confiscated by her father, Henry the Eighth, be restored to the
Roman hierarchy, and that she make confession and submission to the divine
authority of the Catholic Church.

Although religion and civil law was in a very chaotic state, Queen Bess was
not at all disturbed by the threats of the Vatican or the Armada of Spain.
With old Lord Cecil as her prime counsel, she never hesitated to believe in
her own destiny, and, like her opponents, the Jesuits, the end always
justified the means. When it was necessary to rob or kill anybody, the
Queen did so without any compunction of conscience.

She did not care for religion one way or the other, and flattered the
Catholic and Protestant lords alike, manipulating them for her personal and
official advantage. Victory at any price. Business Bessy!

She professed great love for her sister, Mary Queen of Scots, but to foil
the French Catholics and satisfy the Scotch and English Protestants, Lizzie
cut off the head of her beautiful sister. She professed great sorrow after
Mary's head was detached.

Essex and Raleigh, and many other royal courtiers were sent to the Tower
and the block by this red-headed, snaggle-tooth she devil, who only thought
of her own physical pleasures and official vanities, sacrificing everything
to her tyrannical ambition. She died in an insane, frantic fit.

Yet, with all her devilish conduct, she pushed the material interest of
Englishmen ahead for five hundred years, and by her patronage of sailors,
warriors, poets and philosophers, gave the British letters a boom that is
felt to the present day, and through Shakspere's lofty lines, shall
continue down the ages to tell mankind that nothing on earth is lasting but
honest work and eternal truth.

Contention and war is the natural condition of mankind; for all animated
nature, from birth to death, struggles for food and shelter.

The