epoch. Whether united under one crown, as the Netherlands ardently
desired, or closely allied for aggression and defence, the two peoples
were bound indissolubly together. The clouds were rolling up from the
fatal south, blacker and more portentous than ever; the artificial
equilibrium of forces, by which the fate of France was kept in suspense,
was obviously growing every day more uncertain; but the prolonged and
awful interval before the tempest should burst over the lands of freedom
and Protestantism, gave at least time for the prudent to prepare. The
Armada was growing every day in the ports of Spain and Portugal, and
Walsingham doubted, as little as did Buys or Barneveld, toward what
shores that invasion was to be directed. England was to be conquered in
order that the rebellious Netherlands might be reduced; and 'Mucio' was
to be let slip upon the unhappy Henry III. so soon as it was thought
probable that the Bearnese and the Valois had sufficiently exhausted each
other. Philip was to reign in Paris, Amsterdam, London, and Edinburgh,
without stirring from the Escorial. An excellent programme, had there
not been some English gentlemen, some subtle secretaries of state, some
Devonshire skippers, some Dutch advocates and merchants, some Zeeland
fly-boatsmen, and six million men, women, and children, on the two sides
of the North Sea, who had the power of expressing their thoughts rather
bluntly than otherwise, in different dialects of old Anglo-Saxon speech.

Certainly it would be unjust and ungracious to disparage the heroism of
the great Queen when the hour of danger really came, nor would it be
legitimate for us, who can scan that momentous year of expectation, 1587,
by the light of subsequent events and of secret contemporaneous record,
to censure or even sharply to criticise the royal hankering for peace,
when peace had really become impossible. But as we shall have occasion
to examine rather closely the secrets of the Spanish, French, English,
and Dutch councils, during this epoch, we are likely to find, perhaps,