and guidance for every age, then certainly the secret story of the
negotiations by which the wise Queen of England was beguiled, and her
kingdom brought to the verge of ruin, in the spring of 1588, is worthy of
serious attention.

The English commissioners arrived at Ostend. With them came Robert
Cecil, youngest son of Lord-Treasurer Burghley, then twenty-five years of
age.--He had no official capacity, but was sent by his father, that he
might improve his diplomatic talents, and obtain some information as to
the condition of the Netherlands. A slight, crooked, hump-backed young
gentleman, dwarfish in stature, but with a face not irregular in feature,
and thoughtful and subtle in expression, with reddish hair, a thin tawny
beard, and large, pathetic, greenish-coloured eyes, with a mind and
manners already trained to courts and cabinets, and with a disposition
almost ingenuous, as compared to the massive dissimulation with which it
was to be contrasted, and with what was, in aftertimes, to constitute a
portion of his own character, Cecil, young as he was, could not be
considered the least important of the envoys. The Queen, who loved
proper men, called him "her pigmy;" and "although," he observed with
whimsical courtliness, "I may not find fault with the sporting name she
gives me, yet seem I only not to mislike it, because she gives it." The
strongest man among them was Valentine Dale, who had much shrewdness,
experience, and legal learning, but who valued himself, above all things,
upon his Latinity. It was a consolation to him, while his adversaries
were breaking Priscian's head as fast as the Duke, their master, was
breaking his oaths, that his own syntax was as clear as his conscience.
The feeblest commissioner was James-a-Croft, who had already exhibited
himself with very anile characteristics, and whose subsequent
manifestations were to seem like dotage. Doctor Rogers, learned in the
law, as he unquestionably was, had less skill in reading human character,