VIII., in the direction he gave to his measures, in what he created as well as in what he destroyed, there is little to be found of that which is usually called a Reformation. In place of the Pope, he made himself the infallible and uncontrolled head of the English Church. He suppressed the monastic orders in order to possess himself of their property, but he left untouched to a great extent the fabric of the Catholic dogma, and made no comprehensive changes in the ritual of the Church. It was obvious that the king, who could enforce his ecclesiastical authority by all the worldly means in his power, should exercise a far heavier and more tyrannical empire over that Church than the Pope, whose seat was in far distant Rome, and who had to confine himself to spiritual weapons, while upon the despotic will of the King of England hung the lives and the property of all his subjects. With a wave of his hand or a glance of his eye he could carry out his desires. Hence it was on pain of death that any man fell away from the so-called six articles of belief which had been proclaimed by royal decree and confirmed by the helpless Parliament. These articles were fast anchored to the principal points of the Catholic dogma and ritual. Transubstantiationthat is, the changing of the sacrificial bread into the body of Christ was taught; the cup was denied to the laity; private Masses were declared effectual; the celibacy of the clergy and auricular confession were declared necessary. Many brave and innocent men, who in belief and utterance had gone in the direction of the Reformation far beyond the six articles, were burnt as heretics, and many who, on the other hand, held fast to the supremacy of the Pope, were beheaded as traitors.

The events which occurred in England during the reign of Henry VIII., and for ten years after his death, are described by Schiller in his Maria Stuart in the following bitterly sarcastic lines:

I see this high nobility of England,
The proud majestic Senate of the kingdom,
As slaves of the Serail the Sultan's will,
Flatter King Henry Eighth, my stern great uncle ;
I see, besides, this noble upper house,
As willingly as do the venal Commons,
Promulgate laws and then depreciate them,
Bind and unloose the bonds of matrimony
As with the power of the Almighty. Now
I see an English princess disinherited,

And branded with a bastard's shameful title;
The morrow sees her crowned and hailed as Queen.
I see these worthy peers, with swift conviction,
Under four reigns, four times change their belief.

The first of these changes of religion, commanded from above, and imposed upon the entire people, was that already mentioned, which proceeded from Henry VIII. Under the short reign of his son, Edward VI., there was a nearer approach to the Protestant tendency, such as had developed on the Continent of Europe, and which, with some modifications, was now raised to the rank of the State religion. These modifications, however, offended the very spirit of Protestantism, which wrote on its banner the right of free investigation, and led to fierce persecutions of those who still clung to the Catholic faith, causing many innocent and estimable men to mount the bloody scaffold. After Edward's early death, and the swift catastrophe of Lady Jane Grey, there followed Mary, the eldest daughter of Henry, by his marriage with Catherine of Aragon. She subjected the kingdom once more to the authority of the Papal Sec, and re-established Roman Catholicism as the State and popular religion. Besides this, she exhibited a fanaticism worthy of her husband, Philip of Spain. The pyres blazed for the destruction of Protestant heretics. Indeed, her persecuting fury was such as to win for her in the mouth of the people and in history the name of "Bloody Mary." It was Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry VIII. by his second marriage with the unfortunate Anne

Bullen, who, succeeding Mary, severed England for ever from the Roman See, and gave to the English Church the position which, under the name of the Anglican Church, still obtains as the State religion. But even she could not attain to a magnanimous tolerance of other forms of belief. Catholics were persecuted because they neither could nor would acknowledge the Queen of England as the head of the Church in place of the Pope. Nor was she, on the other hand, milder towards the so-called Dissenters or Nonconformists, who held aloof from the State religion, inasmuch as it was their opinion that this Anglican Church had retained too many of the articles of belief, and also too many of the vestments and ceremonics of the old Romish superstition, as they called the Catholic religion. All these changes, all these bloody persecutions, occurred without any attempt. at resistance sufficiently important to merit the name on the part of the populace. There were isolated and unimportant uprisings under Elizabeth; there were repeated attempts to assassinate the Queen, due to the same religious fanaticism which gave birth to the persecutions from above; but, taken as a whole, the English, so proud of their instincts of freedom, bore all tyranny with patience, though it often broke through the limits which the constitution had established by means of Parliament as a counterpoise to the regal power. Elizabeth repeatedly and systematically committed those violations of the constitution which cost Charles I. both throne and life, and James II. his crown. By simple royal proclamation she promulgated orders without the co-operation of Parliament, to which she gave the full force of law. She kept imprisoned for prolonged terms persons whom she deemed suspicious, or who were merely unpleasant to her, without giving them, as prescribed by law, a judicial hearing. The illegal methods of the rack were employed to extort confession from such accused persons as persisted in obstinate denial of their guilt. The unlawful courts of the Star Chamber and of the High Commission, cited in cases of

ecclesiastical offences, were flagrant breaches of the popular rights. Offences which we should call violations of the laws controlling the press were punished, when such writings were considered injurious or offensive to the Government, by merciless whipping, by cutting off of ears,-nay, even in some cases by death. Heavy fines were imposed upon such persons as neglected to attend the public services of the Anglican Church.

Another side of Elizabeth's character was her insistence upon flatteries and homage on the part of her courtiers, such as the proudest Continental monarch neither exacted nor received. In spite of all this, however, although it certainly gave cause for dissatisfaction which at the present day would not be borne for a week without a general uprising of the whole nation, any Englishman, if asked what period he considered the greatest and most glorious in the history of his country, would unhesitatingly answer, the age of Elizabeth. Certainly the courtiers of that day were base. flatterers, who, aware of Elizabeth's weakness, paid her most unworthy homage, and who, above all, after she had long passed her prime, celebrated her personal charms in a manner which to the cool examination of posterity seems contemptible and ridiculous. But, on the other hand, these times of Queen Elizabeth were richer than any others in heroes, warriors, and sailors, who carried the fame of their country into every quarter of the globe, who fought victorious battles by sca and land, who smote in pieces the proud Armada sent forth by a fanatical despot to reduce a free people to civil and religious servitude. Through their bold enterprises in distant parts of the world, through the foundation of colonies, and the conquest of wide tracts of land and large fruitful islands, they widened the area of their country's trade and multiplied its dependencies. They also awakened the imagination of their compatriots by the variety and strangeness of their adventures, often marvellous and exaggerated enough to be fabulous, by the many new places and men

they described to the wondering listeners, exciting them in this manner in the highest degree, and inciting them to fresh activity and to the search for empires new. It is true, it was prescribed to the people by royal mandate what they should believe and what reject, and in what outward form they should serve their God, and the execution of these tyrannical edicts were enforced with culpable severity by bloodshed and violence. Some of the clergy, partly from real fanaticism, partly to obtain and keep the favour of the Queen, willingly and zealously lent their aid to the execution of such decrees. On the other hand, we see this entire people, who allowed their belief and its outward form to be thus imposed upon them, rise as one man to defend the independence of their country against a foreign foe, and to drive off the Spaniard who would have brought back the Inquisition and the days of Bloody Mary. And besides these obsequious pastors there stood the boldest thinkers and philosophers, who sowed the seeds of enlightenment which ere long were to bring forth the most brilliant harvests, calling into active exercise that essential kernel of Protestantism, the right of private judgment in matters of the highest moment to the human mind. With these thinkers and philosophers were ranged poets who at one stroke placed English literature in the first rank of the literature of the world; and in one branch of poetry, the drama, reached a height which has hardly ever been attained before or since. The character and the writings of the greatest of English poets, who, in spite of certain objections, must always be recognised as deserving the foremost place among the dramatic poets of the whole world, are in close relation to the life and spirit of his time. An exhaustive idea of the personality and power of this poet is not obtained by taking into account his skill in versification and the great variety of his characters, which shake us to our inmost depths by their power and terror, and again charm us in the highest degree by their loveliness, nor by the irresistible mirth and