er of
indifference to the English nation whether Elizabeth were to be their
queen or whether some other prince should ascend the throne. In her
reign, and hers alone, they saw the hope of peace, freedom, and
prosperity. Never, therefore, were nation and ruler more closely and
firmly knit together.

The sentiment of loyalty, consequently, was never more sincere and
enthusiastic in the hearts of Englishmen than at that period. To the
nation at large the Queen really appeared what the flattery of her
courtiers and poets represented her. She was to them, in truth, the
Gloriana of Fairyland; the magnificent, the undaunted, the proud
descendant of a thousand years of royalty, and the "Imperial Votress."
She was only a tyrant within the precincts of the court. There she
reigned, it is true, with more than oriental despotism; and she seems to
have delighted occasionally in torturing mean spirits by employing them
upon such thankless offices as their hearts revolted from, though they
had not the courage to refuse them. But beyond the immediate circle of
the palace she was the queen and the mother of her people. To the nation
at large, too, she was equally a heroine, a beautiful idol enshrined in
their hearts. Living on "in maiden meditation fancy-free," rejecting
the proposals of every prince, disregarding the remonstrances of her
subjects, where marriage was spoken of, there was something in the very
unapproachableness of her state which both commanded the respect and
excited the imagination of her people. As a woman, they regarded her
just as she wished them to regard her, as the throned Vestal, the watery
Moon, whose chaste beams could quench the fiery darts of Cupid. She was
to them, in fact, the Belphoebe of Spenser, "with womanly graces,
but not womanly affections--passionless, pure, self-sustained, and
self-dependent"; shining "with a cold lunar light and not the warm glow
of day." This feeling was increased by the spirit of chivalry which
still lingered in English society, and, like the setting sun, poured a
flood of golden light over the court.

The incense, then, that was offered to the Queen by such men as Spenser,
Raleigh, Essex, Shakespeare, and Sidney, the most noble, chivalrous, and
gifted spirits that ever gathered round a throne, is not to be judged of
as the flattery which cringing courtiers pay to a dreaded tyrant; but
rather as the outpouring of a general enthusiasm, the echo of the
stirring voice of chival