It is at once, on the one part pleasant, on the other painful, to find the Lord Treasurer Burleigh, who had ever been the fast friend of Whitgift, frequently expressing his disapprobation of the primate’s severity against non-conformists, and his wish “that the spirit of gentleness might win, rather than severity.” And being here on Elizabethan ground, let us note Mr. Froude’s reference to the diverse procedure of Cecil and Throgmorton in their several dealings with the queen,—she being one of the many strong-willed people, on whom menaces and reproaches operate only as a spur. Cecil understood best Elizabeth’s disposition. “By ‘practices,’ by ‘bye-ways,’ as he afterwards described it, by affecting to humour what he was passionately anxious to prevent, he was holding his mistress under delicate control; and he dreaded lest his light leading-strings should be broken by a ruder touch.” As with the queen, so with her people. When Catherine de Medici expressed astonishment to Sir Thomas Smith, at a certain deference paid by his sovereign to the nation she ruled, “Madam,” he replied, “her people be not like your people; they must be trained by _douceur_ and persuasion, not by rigour and violence.” The greatest of Russian empresses emulated in this respect the greatest of English queens. Indeed, her tendency to indulgence was imputed to Catharine II. as a fault, advantage being taken of her constant reluctance to punish. But how far greater things did she, on the whole, achieve with her subjects, exclaims Mr. Herman Merivale, “thus gently led, than those of her predecessors and successors who employed on them in such abundance the more forcible methods of government!” Mr. Freeman, in the course of showing that Harold’s way of bringing in the proud Danes of the North to his obedience was not exactly the same as William’s way, describes him as determining, with that noble and generous daring which is sometimes the highest prudence, to trust himself in the hands of the people who refused to acknowledge him. “These his enemies, who would not that he should reign over them, instead of being brought and slain before him, were to be won over by the magic of his personal presence in their own land.” To apply what the Gaulish ambassador says of a great Roman in Jonson’s tragedy, “This magistrate hath struck an awe into me, And by his sweetness won a more regard Unto his place, than all the boisterous moods That ignorant greatness practiseth, to fill The large, unfit authority it wears.”