All were at variance among themselves. The Queen differed with them all in her principles and policy. She loved her country, its glory and independence; and to secure these, pursued her own eccentric and mysterious path, urged on by impulse, instinctive, spiritual or Angelic, maintaining it with apparent self-will and unreasonableness, perverseness and irresolution, vacillation and caprice. But still, in proud and lonely grandeur, with unflinching courage and firmness, undeterred by the fear of war or assassination, “_Semper Eadem_,” against all opposition. She foiled with unexampled and unfailing skill, traitors and spies, and false advisers, and every species of secret or open foe, constrained to fence, deceive, betray, even to coquet, to save her country, her throne, and her life! She came through it all in triumph with the TRIDENT of the OCEAN in her grasp, acknowledged by the Nations, as the “QUEEN OF THE SEA, the Restorer of Naval glory.” Even the Pope (Sixtus V.) forgetting the policy of his faith, was struck with admiration of “this valiant and noble woman.” The name of her great hero, Drake (Il Draco) was constantly in his mouth, who, he said, “took the King of Spain by the beard,” and he ascribed the exploits which filled Europe with their fame to the high spirit of the Queen who sent him out. The reign of Elizabeth is one of the most glorious epochs in the history of our Nation—a most important CRISIS in the Destiny of the World. The Feudal system, which, with brute force, had trampled down humanity in its own blood, had spent its fury. That Iron Age was fast fading away. A brilliant dawn had unexpectedly appeared, of that Intelligence, which with the power of Science and Manufactures, Commerce, and the rights of Man, was to rule the world. Our great race, having “renewed its strength in the Islands” with the “abundance of the sea converted” to it, was now to go forth on its mission, and push its people to the utmost bounds of the everlasting hills. The Wars of the Roses, battle and the block, had consumed the Barons, the Knights, and the Men-at-arms. The Church, which had endeavoured to strangle Liberty and Thought itself, was now a crumbling and bloody ruin, shorn of its pomp, its authority, and its land. A NEW POWER was rising from the Sea, before which the Earth was to quail, and its despotisms to succumb. Elizabeth was the head, the Elect of Providence, to lead it forth into action, and the noble Spirits who were driven by the bigotry and persecution of the Marian faction to the liberty of the wild waves, as freebooters, were the accomplished instruments to effect its purpose. Light and Darkness, Liberty and Despotism, had once more entered on a mortal struggle, and the Ocean was the arena on which they were to fight it out—Spain and the Pope on one side, England on the other. That STRUGGLE it is the PURPOSE of the present Drama to represent, its Nature, its Conduct, its Agents, and its Issue.