Again, in the good times of Elizabeth, humanity was blessed with a modesty, a deference—in these days of bronze, to be vainly sought for—towards the awfulness of power, the grim majesty of authority. And if, indeed, it happened that some outrageous wretch, forgetful of the purpose of nature in creating him the Queen’s liegeman, and therefore her property—if, for a moment, he should cease to remember the fealty which, by the principle of the divine right of kings, should be vital to him as the blood in his veins—why, was there not provided for him, by the benignity of custom and the law, a salutary remedy? If he advanced a new opinion, had he not ears wherewith, by hangman’s surgery, he might be cured of such disease? If he took a mistaken view of the rights of his fellow-subjects, might he not be taught to consider them from a higher point of elevation, and so be instructed? Booksellers, in the merry time of Elizabeth, were enabled to vindicate a higher claim to moral and physical daring than is permitted to them in these dull and drivelling days. He who published a book, questioning—though never so gently—the prerogative of her Majesty to do just as the spirit should move her, might have his right hand chopped off, and afterwards—there have been examples of such devotion—wave his bloody stump, with a loyal shout of “God save the Queen!” But these were merry days—golden days—in which the royal prerogative was more majestic, more awful than in the nineteenth century. And wherefore? The reason is plain as the Queen’s arms.