find the great people most agreeable and gracious, but warning him not to presume upon their intimacy, since they regarded themselves as gods.* A century later, the noble lord who serves his queen kneeling demands the same condescension from his inferiors when they wait on him. It is only when we appreciate the depth of this feeling that we can comprehend the force of the recoil in the next century, which, for a time, levelled all distinctions of rank and sent a monarch to the scaffold. With the Restoration the servility returns. Charles II., while at his meals, ostentatiously called Grammont's attention to the fact that his officers served him on their knees. Grammont, as unaccustomed to English cooking as to English manners, replied: "I thank your majesty for the explanation; I thought they were begging pardon for giving you so bad a dinner."+

Hentzner, while in London, had an opportunity also of seeing some of the amusements of the city people. The favorite sports were bull-baiting, bear-baiting, and bear-whipping, for which a theatre was especially provided. For baiting, the bull or bear was securely chained, and then set upon by dogs, who worried him to death. To witness this was a charming recreation, but it was thrown into the shade by the bear-beating, in which the unhappy brute, being chained to a post and blindfolded, was flogged to death with whips. In this diversion there was little of the excitement which attends a bullfight, where skill and nerve are required by the success

This custom was

*"The noble lords are gods in their own eyes."--" Times of Erasmus and Luther;" Froude's "Short Studies," p. 69. +"Grammont's Memoirs," Bohn's ed. p. 25. not finally given up until the reign of George I. in the Eighteenth Century," i. 239.

Hentzner's "Travels."

Lecky's "England

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ful matadore; but if the bear made noise enough and was long enough in dying, the amusement must have been intense. Nor was it the masses alone that enjoyed these sports; they were the particular delight of the nobles and of Queen Elizabeth herself. In fact, the Privy Council, in 1591, issued an order that no plays should be exhibited on Thursday, because on that day bear-baiting and such like pastime had been usually practised, "which are maintained for her majesty's pleasure." With them she entertained foreign ambassadors, and when she made her famous visit to Kenilworth, thirteen bears were provided for her diversion, being baited with a large species of ban-dog.* It may be that the Puritan, when he abolished these exhibitions, cared nothing for the bear; he certainly conferred a service on humanity by doing away with such brutalizing sights.†

Having seen something of the Englishman's dwelling, his food, costume, manners, and sports, let us now consider his education, religion, and morals.

And first we must notice that in regard to the learning of this time a most exaggerated notion prevails in some quarters, the result of judging of a whole people from a few isolated individuals. Elizabeth had been brought up in comparative seclusion until she ascended the throne, at the age of twenty-five. Her father, despite his faults, was a friend of letters, and gave his daughters, who were in the line of succession to the throne, such an education as was fitted for an English monarch of the

* Drake, p. 430.

In 1603, James I. by a proclamation prohibited bear-baiting and bull-baiting on the Sabbath. Strype's "Annals," iv. 379. The bullbaiting was re-established after the Restoration, and continued to be a favorite amusement all through the eighteenth century. Lecky, i. 598.

day. That Elizabeth should have spoken four or five languages is of itself little proof of intellectual cultivation. All the better class of Russians do the same today, while couriers and boys brought up in such polyglot centres as Constantinople often speak ten or twelve.

But, apart from this, the queen carried to the throne a love of the classics, which she retained all through her life. She read and translated the Latin authors, and, what was more rare in England, she also read Greek. In addition, she made these studies fashionable at court, so that several other ladies pursued them with success. Judging in a loose, general way from these well-known facts, many persons reason that if the women of that day had such accomplishments, the acquisitions of the men must have been phenomenal. But here is the mistake. Elizabeth, in her education, as in many of her traits of character, was more of a man than a woman.* Roger Ascham, her Greek teacher, said, though perhaps panegyrically, that she devoted more time to reading and study than any six gentlemen of her court, and that she read more Greek with him at Windsor Castle every day than some prebendaries of the Church read Latin in a week.†

* Sir Robert Cecil said of her that she "was more than a man, and (in troth) somtyme less than a woman.” — Harrington's "Nugæ Antiquæ," i. 345, Letters of 1603.

Roger Ascham's "Scholemaster," p. 63, Mayor's ed., 1863. A specimen of the English written by Elizabeth is given in the following prayer, which she composed in 1597:

"Oh God, Almaker, keeper, and guider, inurement of thy rare seen, unused, and seel'd heard of goodness poured in so plentiful a sort upon us full oft, breeds now this boldness to crave with bowed knees and hearts of humility thy large hand of helping power, to assist with wonder our just cause, not founded on pride's motion, or begun on malice stock, but, as thou best knowest, to whom nought

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It is from her reputation for learning, with that of a few ladies of her court, and some of the men distinguished in civil life, such as Smith, Sadler, and Raleigh, that, as the iconoclastic Hallam says, "the general character of her reign has been, in this point of view, considerably overrated."* Such learning as existed in the island was confined almost exclusively to the classics, which the people of the Continent, and especially the Italians, had been cultivating for two centuries.† Of

is hid, grounded on just defence from wrongs, hate, and bloody desire of conquest, for since means thou hast imparted to save that thou has given by enjoying such a people as scorns their bloodshed, where surety ours is one. Fortify, dear God, such hearts in such sort as their best part may be worst, that to the truest part meant worse, with least loss to such a nation as depise their lives for their country's good; that all foreign lands may laud and admire the omnipotency of thy works, a fact alone for thee only to perform. So shall thy name be spread for wonders wrought, and the faithful encouraged to repose in thy unfellowed grace; and we that minded nought but right, enchained in thy bonds for perpetual slavery, and live and die the sacrifisers of our souls for such obtained favors. Warrant, dear Lord, all this with thy command."--Strype, " Annals," iv. 440.

Those persons who, from the flatterers of Elizabeth, have formed a high opinion of her literary attainments, may, with considerable profit, study this production, which is given just as she wrote it for public use in the churches, free from the emendations of modern editors. If she wrote and spoke other languages in the same manner, she might, without great effort, have mastered a large number.

* Hallam's "Literature of Europe," ii. 39. Again, speaking of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primate of the English Church, the same author remarks: "Whitgift was not of much learning, if it be true that, as the editors of the 'Biographia Britannica' intimate, he had no acquaintance with the Greek language. This must seem strange to those who have an exaggerated notion of the scholarship of that age."-Hallam's "Const. Hist.," i. 202, note.

The Continental scholars at this time, in addition to Greek and Latin, were cultivating Hebrew, Chaldee, Arabic, etc. See last chapter.

science the English knew almost nothing, and even the study of the simpler branches of mathematics was reprobated by men like Ascham.*

Bruno, when he visited England in 1583, met most of the men who were accounted scholars. He expounded to them the theory that the earth revolves around the sun, but he made few converts. Going to Oxford, he describes the Dons, who were court nominees, as "men arrayed in long robes of velvet, with hands most precious for the multitude of precious stones on their fingers, golden chains about their necks, and with manners as void of courtesy as cowherds." The students were ignorant, boorish, and indevout, occupied in horse-play, drinking, and duelling, toasting in ale-houses, and graduating in the noble science of self-defence. The learned Italian lectured at the university on the immortality of the soul and other kindred subjects, and was near coming to blows with the pedagogues, who were slenderly endowed with arguments. He found them armed, not with prudence and power, but with "hearts that died of cold, and learning that died of hunger." Returning to London, he met a little circle of congenial spirits, and formed with them a society, in imitation of the Italian academies, which numbered among its members Sidney, Greville, Dyer, and Temple.t

*"The Scholemaster," pp. 14, 210.

The examination for a degree was merely nominal. A man might graduate from a university, and yet be almost illiterate. Hallam's "Literature in Europe," ji. 308.

Frith's "Life of Bruno,” pp. 121, 125, 128. Still, after Bruno's visit, England produced three scientific men, of whom any country might be proud-Harvey, Gilbert, and Hariott. All, however, had pursued their studies on the Continent.