Bacon, Delia, 1811-1859 / 2008-11-03 00:00:00


It was in the later years of the sixteenth century, in the latter half
of the reign of Elizabeth, that the Printing press, and the revived
Learning of Antiquity, and the Reformation, and the discovery of
America, the new revival of the genius of the North in art and
literature, and the Scientific Discoveries which accompanied this
movement on the continent, began to combine their effects here; and it
was about that time that the political horizon began to exhibit to the
statesman's eye, those portents which both the poet and the
philosopher of that time, have described with so much iteration and
amplitude. These new social elements did not appear to promise in
their combination here, stability to the institutions which Henry the
Seventh, and Henry the Eighth had established in this island.
The genius of Elizabeth conspired with the anomaly of her position to
make her the steadfast patron and promoter of these movements,--worthy
grand-daughter of Henry the seventh as she was, and opposed on
principle, as she was, to the ultimatum to which they were visibly and
stedfastly tending; but, at the same time, her sagacity and prudence
enabled her to ward off the immediate result.
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