one of the stock pieces of history, and her words of
defiance to Parma and to Spain have been ringing through the world ever
since they were uttered _after_ the Armada had ceased to threaten her
throne. We now know that the common opinion on this subject, like the
common opinion respecting some other crises, was all wrong, a delusion
and a sham, and based on nothing but plausible lies. Mr. Motley has put
men right on this point, as on some others; and it is impossible to
read his brilliant and accurate narrative of the events of 1588 without
coming to the conclusion that Elizabeth was in the summer of that year
in the way to receive punishment for the cowardly butchery which had
been perpetrated, in her name, if not by her direct orders, in the great
hall of Fotheringay. She was saved by those winds which helped the Dutch
to blockade Parma's army, in the first instance, and then by those
Orcadian tempests which smote the Armada, and converted its haughty
pride into a by-word and a scoffing. The military preparations of
England were of the feeblest character; and it is not too much to say,
that the only parallel case of Governmental weakness is that which is
afforded by the American history of last spring, when we had not an
efficient company or a seaworthy armed ship with which to fight the
Secessionists, who had been openly making their preparations for war for
months. The late Mr. Richard Rush mentions, in the second series of his
"Residence at the Court of London," that at a dinner at the Marquis of
Lansdowne's, in 1820, the conversation turned on the Spanish Armada; and
he was surprised to find that most of the company, which was composed of
members of Parliament and other public men, were of the opinion that the
Spaniards, could they have been landed, would have been victorious. With
genuine American faith in English invincibility, he wondered what the
company could mean, and also what the English armies would have been
about. It was not possible for any one then to have said that there were
no English armies at that time to be about anything; but now we see
that those armies were but imaginary bodies, having not even a paper
existence. Parma, who was even an abler diplomatist than soldier,--that
is, he was the most accomplished liar in an age that was made up of
falsehood,--had so completely gulled the astute Elizabeth that she was
living in the fools' paradise; and so little did she and most of her
counsellors expe