walking upon the waves, and ordered his disciples to cast their nets, and
to present the fish to his Excellency. Farther on, he was confronted by
Mars and Bellona, who recited Latin odes in his honour. Seven beautiful
damsels upon a stage, representing the United States, offered him golden
keys; seven others equally beautiful, embodying the seven sciences,
presented him with garlands, while an enthusiastic barber adorned his
shop with seven score of copper basins, with a wag-light in each,
together with a rose, and a Latin posy in praise of Queen Elizabeth.
Then there were tiltings in the water between champions mounted upon
whales, and other monsters of the deep-representatives of siege, famine,
pestilence, and murder--the whole interspersed with fireworks, poetry,
charades, and Matthias, nor Anjou, nor King Philip, nor the Emperor
Charles, in their triumphal progresses, had been received with more
spontaneous or more magnificent demonstrations. Never had the living
pictures been more startling, the allegories more incomprehensible, the
banquets more elaborate, the orations more tedious. Beside himself with
rapture, Leicester almost assumed the God. In Delft, a city which he
described as "another London almost for beauty and fairness," he is said
so far to have forgotten himself as to declare that his family had--in
the person of Lady Jane Grey, his father, and brother--been unjustly
deprived of the crown of England; an indiscretion which caused a shudder
in all who heard him. It was also very dangerous for the Lieutenant-
General to exceed the bounds of becoming modesty at that momentous epoch.
His power, as we shall soon have occasion to observe, was anomalous, and
he was surrounded by enemies. He was not only to grapple with a rapidly
developing opposition in the States, but he was surrounded with masked
enemies, whom he had brought with him from England. Every act and word
of his were liable to closest scrutiny, and likely to be turned against
him. For it was most characteristic of that intriguing age, that even
the astute Walsingham, who had an eye and an ear at every key-hole in