In our next chapter we shall meet this prudent and accomplished Princess face to face--in her farthingale and ruff--with the jewels on her fingers, and the crown upon her head--bearing herself right royally. And around her we shall find such staid worthies as Burleigh and Richard Hooker; and such bright spirits as Sidney and Raleigh, and that sweet poet Spenser, who was in that day counting the flowing measures of that long song, whose mellow cadences have floated musically down from the far days of Elizabeth to these fairer days of ours. CHAPTER VI. In our last talk we entered upon that brilliant sixteenth century, within whose first quarter three great kings held three great thrones:--Charles V. of Spain, Francis I. of France, and Henry VIII. of England. New questions were astir; Art--in the seats of Art--was blazing at its best: the recent fall of Constantinople under the Turk had sent a tide of Greek scholars, Greek art, and Greek letters flowing over Western Europe, and drifting into the antiquated courts of Oxford and Cambridge. I spoke of the magnificent Wolsey, and of his great university endowments; also, of that ripe scholar, Sir Thomas More, who could not mate his religion, or his statesmanship with the caprices of the King, and so, died by the axe. We saw Cranmer--meaning to be good, if goodness did not call for strength; we heard Latimer’s swift, homely speech, and saw Tyndale with his English Testament--both these coming to grief; and we had glimpses of John Knox shaking the pulpit with his frail hand, and shaking all Scotch Christendom with his fearless, strident speech. We heard the quaint psalmody of Sternhold, and the sweeter and more heathen verse of Wyatt and of Surrey; lastly, I gave a sketch of that old schoolmaster, Roger Ascham, who by his life, tied the reigns of Henry and of Elizabeth together, and who taught Greek and Latin and penmanship and Archery to that proud princess--whom we encounter now--in her high ruff, and her piled-up head-dress, with a fair jewelled hand that puts a man’s grip upon the sceptre. _Elizabethan England._