Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/155



E turn from the period of the Middle Ages, with its tyrannies and trammels, its bondage and blindness, its mental stagnation and spirit of superstition, with feelings akin to those which ushered in the new era of the wondrous sixteenth century. It is like turning from the darkness of night to the morning sunshine, if we allow the period under Henry VII. as the breaking of the dawn and the Elizabethan era as the noontide of triumphant glory. This is not the place to repeat the charming story of the Renaissance, that movement which marks the