understanding of your Alteza, and to direct the same to his glory, to the
uniting of both their Majesties and the finishing of these most bloody
wars, whereby these countries, being in the highest degree of misery
desolate, lie as it were prostrate before the wrathful presence of the
most mighty God, most lamentably beseeching his Divine Majesty to
withdraw his scourge of war from them, and to move the hearts of princes
to restore them unto peace, whereby they might attain unto their ancient
flower and dignity. Into the hands of your Alteza are now the lives of
many thousands, the destruction of cities, towns, and countries, which to
put to the fortune of war how perilous it were, I pray consider. Think
ye, ye see the mothers left alive tendering their offspring in your
presence, 'nam matribus detestata bells,'" continued the orator. "Think
also of others of all sexes, ages, and conditions, on their knees before
your Alteza, most humbly praying and crying most dolorously to spare
their lives, and save their property from the ensanguined scourge of the
insane soldiers," and so on, and so on.

Now Philip II. was slow in resolving, slower in action. The ponderous
three-deckers of Biscay were notoriously the dullest sailers ever known,
nor were the fettered slaves who rowed the great galleys of Portugal or
of Andalusia very brisk in their movements; and yet the King might have
found time to marshal his ideas and his squadrons, and the Armada had
leisure to circumnavigate the globe and invade England afterwards, if a
succession of John Rogerses could have entertained his Highness with
compliments while the preparations were making.

But Alexander--at the very outset of the Doctor's eloquence--found it
difficult to suppress his feelings. "I can assure your Majesty," said
Rogers, "that his eyes--he has a very large eye--were moistened.
Sometimes they were thrown upward to heaven, sometimes they were fixed