We have heard a good deal of late years about the Imperial policy of Elizabeth. By some it has been extolled for its success in enabling the nation at first to steer clear of, and at last to brave openly, the hostility of Catholic Europe. By others its example has been deprecated not for its inherent defects, but because it is unsuitable to our own times; yet there does not seem to be any sufficient reason why, on the one hand, it should receive from us the praise that was denied to it by far less discerning contemporaries; or, again, why it should not be deemed as inapplicable to this particular age as to any other in which it has been tried and found wanting.