Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/181



ROM the necessarily serious attitude of our forefathers under the religious changes of the early Tudors, it is a relief to turn to the study of England under her first great Queen, to dream once again of that "merrie" country so fantastically described by Spenser, and to realise that

so dramatically represented by Shakspere, resembles more closely than heretofore the England of to-day.

The Middle Ages have gone for ever. Past is