e Scheldt, the fires of
civil war were ever burning. Deeper within the heart of Germany, there
was more tranquillity; but it was the tranquillity rather of paralysis
than of health. A fearful account was slowly accumulating, which was
evidently to be settled only by one of the most horrible wars which
history has ever recorded. Meantime there was apathy where there should
have been enthusiasm; parsimony and cowardice where generous and combined
effort were more necessary than ever; sloth without security. The
Protestant princes, growing fat and contented on the spoils of the
church, lent but a deaf ear to the moans of Truchsess, forgetting that
their neighbour's blazing roof was likely soon to fire their own. "They
understand better, 'proximus sum egomet mild'," wrote Lord Willoughby
from Kronenburg, "than they have learned, 'humani nihid a me alienum
puto'. These German princes continue still in their lethargy, careless of
the state of others, and dreaming of their ubiquity, and some of them, it
is thought, inclining to be Spanish or Popish more of late than
heretofore."

The beggared archbishop, more forlorn than ever since the death of his
great patron, cried woe from his resting-place in Delft, upon Protestant
Germany. His tones seemed almost prophetic of the thirty years' wrath to
blaze forth in the next generation. "Courage is wanting to the people
throughout Germany," he wrote to William Lewis of Nassau. "We are
becoming the laughing-stock of the nations. Make sheep of yourselves, and
the wolf will eat you. We shall find our destruction in our immoderate
desire for peace. Spain is making a Papistical league in Germany.
Therefore is Assonleville despatched thither, and that's the reason why
our trash of priests are so insolent in the empire. 'Tis astonishing how
they are triumphing on all sides. God will smite them. Thou dear God!
What are our evangelists about in Germany? Asleep on both ears. 'Dormiunt
in utramque aurem'. I doubt they will be suddenly enough awakened one
day, and the cry will be, 'Who'd have thought it?' Then they will be for
getting oil for the lamp, for shutting the stable-door when the steed is
stolen," and so on, with a string of homely proverbs worthy of Sancho
Panza, or landgrave William of Hesse.

In truth, one of the most painful features is the general aspect of
affairs was the coldness of the German Protestants towards the
Netherlands. The enmity between Lutherans and Calvinists was al