ct invasion, that a single Spanish regiment of infantry
might, had it then been landed, have driven the whole organized force
of England from Sheerness to Bristol. Those Englishmen who sneer so
bitterly at the conduct of our Government but a year ago would do well
to study closely the history of their own country in 1588, in which they
will find much matter calculated to lessen their conceit, and to teach
them charity. The Lincoln Government of the United States had been in
existence but little more than thirty days when it found itself involved
in war with the Rebels; the Elizabethan Government had been in existence
for thirty years when the Armada came to the shores of England, to the
astonishment and dismay of those "barons bold and statesmen old in
bearded majesty" whom we have been content to regard as the bravest and
the wisest men that have lived since David and Solomon. Elizabeth, who
had a beard that vied with Burleigh's,--the evidence of her virgin
innocence,--felt every hair of her head curling from terror when she
learned how she had been "done" by Philip's lieutenant; and old Burleigh
must have thought that his mistress was in the condition of Jockey of
Norfolk's master at Bosworth,--"bought and sold." Fortunately for both
old women, and for us all, the summer gales of 1588 were adverse to the
Spaniards, and protected Old England. We know not whence the wind cometh
nor whither it goeth, but we know that its blows have often been given
with effect on human affairs; and it never blew with more usefulness,
since the time when it used up the ships of Xerxes, than when it sent
the ships of Philip to join "the treasures that old Ocean hoards." Had
England then been conquered by Spain, though but temporarily, Protestant
England would have ceased to exist, and the current of history would
have been as emphatically changed as was the current of the Euphrates
under the labors of the soldiers of Cyrus. We should have had no
Shakspeare, or a very different Shakspeare from the one that we have;
and the Elizabethan age would have presented to after centuries an
appearance altogether unlike that which now so impressively strikes the
mind. As that was the time out of which all that is great and good in
England and America has proceeded, in letters and in arms, in religion
and in politics, we can easily understand how vast must have been the
change, had not the winds of the North been so unpropitious to the
purposes of the Ki