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height of his powers; Raleigh, a prisoner in the Tower of London, was engaged on his History of the World, and Bacon had just commenced his marvellous work, The Novum Organum. "The very air of London must have been electric with the daily words of these immortals," who made the Elizabethan Age the most glorious period since classic times. American literature was indeed fortunate in the time of its birth.