who have the wish or the gift to make things pleasant. He had
transmitted the accounts just as they had been delivered, certified by
the treasurers of the States and by the English paymasters, and the Queen
was appalled at the sum-totals. She could never proceed with such a war
as that, she said, and she declined a loan of sixty thousand pounds which
the States requested, besides stoutly refusing to advance her darling
Robin a penny to pay off the mortgages upon two-thirds of his estates,
on which the equity of redemption was fast expiring, or to give him the
slightest help in furnishing him forth anew for the wars.

Yet not one of her statesmen doubted that these Netherland battles were
English battles, almost as much as if the fighting-ground had been the
Isle of Wight or the coast of Kent, the charts of which the statesmen and
generals of Spain were daily conning.

Wilkes, too, while defending Leicester stoutly behind his back, doing his
best, to explain his short-comings, lauding his courage and generosity,
and advocating his beloved theory of popular sovereignty with much
ingenuity and eloquence, had told him the truth to his face. Although
assuring him that if he came back soon, he might rule the States "as a
schoolmaster doth his boys," he did not fail to set before him the
disastrous effects of his sudden departure and of his protracted absence;
he had painted in darkest colours the results of the Deventer treason,
he had unveiled the cabals against his authority, he had repeatedly and
vehemently implored his return; he had, informed the Queen, that
notwithstanding some errors of, administration, he was much the fittest
man to represent her in the Netherlands, and, that he could accomplish,
by reason of his experience, more in three months than any other man
could do in a year. He bad done his best to reconcile the feuds which
existed between him and important personages in the Netherlands, he had