s by sea be great," he,
said; "but I know that all that he and his friends can make are not able
to match with her Majesty's forces, if it please her to use the means
that God hath given her. But besides her own, if she need; I will
undertake to furnish her from hence, upon two months' warning, a navy for
strong and tall ships, with their furniture and mariners, that the King
of Spain, and all that he can make, shall not be able to encounter with
them. I think the bruit of his preparations is made the greater to
terrify her Majesty and this country people. But, thanked be God, her
Majesty hath little cause to fear him. And in this country they esteem no
more of his power by sea than I do of six fisher-boats off Rye."

Thus suggestive is it to peep occasionally behind the curtain. In the
calm cabinet of the Escorial, Philip and his comendador mayor are laying
their heads together, preparing the invasion of England; making
arrangements for King Alexander's coronation in that island, and--like
sensible, farsighted persons as they are--even settling the succession to
the throne after Alexander's death, instead of carelessly leaving such
distant details to chance, or subsequent consideration. On the other
hand, plain Dutch sea-captains, grim beggars of the sea, and the like,
denizens of a free commonwealth and of the boundless ocean-men who are at
home on blue water, and who have burned gunpowder against those
prodigious slave-rowed galleys of Spain--together with their new allies,
the dauntless mariners of England--who at this very moment are "singeing
the King of Spain's beard," as it had never been singed before--are not
so much awestruck with the famous preparations for invasion as was
perhaps to be expected. There may be a delay, after all, before Parma can
be got safely established in London, and Elizabeth in Orcus, and before
the blood-tribunal of the Inquisition can substitute its sway for that of
the "most noble, wise, and learned United States." Certainly, Philip the
Prudent would have been startled, difficult as he was to astonish, could
he have known that those rebel Hollanders of his made no more account of
his slowly-preparing invincible armada than of six fisher-boats off Rye.
Time alone could show where confidence had been best placed. Meantime it
was certain, that it well behoved Holland and England to hold hard
together, nor let "that enterprise quail."

The famous expedition of Sir Francis Drake was the co