e
things entering continually into the meditations of my heart--so much do
they import the safety of yourself and your estate--do enforce me, in the
abundance of my love and duty to your Majesty, most earnestly to speak,
write, and weep unto you, lest when the occasion yet offered shall be
gone by, this blessed means of your defence, by God's provident goodness
thus put into your hand, will then be utterly lost, lo; never, never more
to be recovered again."

It was a noble, wise, and eloquent appeal, but it was muttered in vain.
Was not Leicester--his soul filled with petty schemes of reigning in
Utrecht, and destroying the constitutional government of the
Provinces--in full possession of the royal ear? And was not the same ear
lent, at most critical moment, to the insidious Alexander Farnese, with
his whispers of peace, which were potent enough to drown all the
preparations for the invincible Armada?

Six months had rolled away since Leicester had left the Netherlands; six
months long, the Provinces, left in a condition which might have become
anarchy, had been saved by the wise government of the States-General; six
months long the English soldiers had remained unpaid by their sovereign;
and now for six weeks the honest, eloquent, intrepid, but gentle
Buckhurst had done his best to conciliate all parties, and to mould the
Netherlanders into an impregnable bulwark for the realm of England. But
his efforts were treated with scorn by the Queen. She was still maddened
by a sense of the injuries done by the States to Leicester. She was
indignant that her envoy should have accepted such lame apologies for the
4th of February letter; that he should have received no better atonement
for their insolent infringements of the Earl's orders during his absence;
that he should have excused their contemptuous proceedings and that, in
short, he should have been willing to conciliate and forgive when he
should have stormed and railed. "You conceived, it seemeth," said her
Majesty, "that a more sharper manner of proceeding would have exasperated
matters to the prejudice of the service, and therefore you did think it
more fit to wash the wounds rather with water than vinegar, wherein we
would rather have wished, on the other side, that you had better
considered that festering wounds had more need of corrosives than
lenitives. Your own judgment ought to have taught that such a alight and
mild kind of dealing with a people so ingrate and v