Yet each was a very inferior power, in comparison with the great empires of the past or those which then existed.
It is difficult, without a strong effort of the imagination, to reduce the English empire to the slender proportions which belonged to her in the days of Elizabeth.

That epoch was full of light and life.

The constellations which have for centuries been shining in the English firmament were then human creatures walking English earth.

The captains, statesmen, corsairs, merchant-adventurers, poets, dramatists, the great Queen herself, the Cecils, Raleigh, Walsingham, Drake, Hawkins, Gilbert, Howard, Willoughby, the Norrises, Essex, Leicester, Sidney, Spenser, Shakspeare and the lesser but brilliant lights which surrounded him; such were the men who lifted England upon an elevation to which she was not yet entitled by her material grandeur.

At last she had done with Rome, and her expansion dated from that moment.
Holland and England, by the very condition of their existence, were sworn foes to Philip.