and defeat of the great Armada, and destroyed the projects of
the Spanish tyrant for introducing religious and political slavery into
England! It seems as if Mr. Motley's Seventh Chapter were a prophecy,
rather than a history.

* * * * *

An invasion and a conspiracy may always be expected to make head at
first. The men who plan such enterprises are not fools, but cunning,
managing people. They always have, or think they have, a _prima facie_
case to start with. They have been preparing just as the highwayman has
been preparing for his aggressive movement. They expect to find,
and they commonly do find, their victims only half ready, if at all
forewarned, and to take them at a disadvantage. If conspirators and
invaders do not strike heavy blows at once, their cause is desperate; if
they do, it proves very little, because that is the least they expected
to do.

It is very easy to run up a score behind the door of a tavern; credit
is good, and chalk is cheap. But these little marks have all got to be
crossed out by-and-by, and the time will surely come for turning all
empty pockets wrong side out. The aggressors begin in a great passion,
and are violent and dangerous at first; the nation or community assailed
are surprised, dismayed, perhaps, like the good people in the coach,
when they see Dick Turpin's pistol thrust in at the window.

The Romans were certainly a genuine fighting people. They kept the state
on a perpetual military footing. They were never without veterans, men
and leaders bred in camp and experienced in warfare. Yet what a piece of
work their African invader cut out for them! It seemed they had to learn
everything over again. Thousands upon thousands killed and driven into
Lake Trasimenus,--_fifteen thousand_ prisoners taken; total rout again
at Cannae,--rings picked from slain gentlemen's fingers by the peck or
bushel,--everything lost in battle, and a great revolt through the
Southern provinces as a natural consequence. What then? Rome was not to
be Africanized as yet. The great leader who had threatened the capital,
and scored these portentous victories, had at last to pay for them all
in defeat and humiliation on his own soil.

Even the robber Spartacus beat the Roman armies at first, with their
consuls at their head, and laid waste a large part of the peninsula.
These violent uprisings and incursions are always dangerous at their
onset; they are just like new dis