se fine phrases, he was much impressed; and they
were pronounced at the English court to be "very princely and
Christianly." An elaborate comment too was drawn up by the comptroller on
every line of the letter. "These be very good words," said the
comptroller.

But the Queen was even more pleased with the last proof of the Duke's
sincerity, than even Burghley and Croft had been. Disregarding all the
warnings of Walsingham, she renewed her expressions of boundless
confidence in the wily Italian. "We do assure you," wrote the Lords, "and
so you shall do well to avow it to the Duke upon our honours, that her
Majesty saith she thinketh both their minds to accord upon one good and
Christian meaning, though their ministers may perchance sound upon a
discord." And she repeated her resolution to send over her commissioners,
so soon as the Duke had satisfied her as to the hostile preparations.

We have now seen the good faith of the English Queen towards the Spanish
government. We have seen her boundless trust in the sincerity of Farnese
and his master. We have heard the exuberant professions of an honest
intention to bring about a firm and lasting peace, which fell from the
lips of Farnese and of his confidential agents. It is now necessary to
glide for a moment into the secret cabinet of Philip, in order to satisfy
ourselves as to the value of all those professions. The attention of the
reader is solicited to these investigations, because the year 1587 was a
most critical period in the history of English, Dutch, and European
liberty. The coming year 1588 had been long spoken of in prophecy, as the
year of doom, perhaps of the destruction of the world, but it was in
1587, the year of expectation and preparation, that the materials were
slowly combining out of which that year's history was to be formed.

And there sat the patient letter-writer in his cabinet, busy with his
schemes. His grey head was whitening fast. He was sixty years of age. His
frame was slight, his figure stooping, his digestion very weak, his
manner more glacial and sepulchral than ever; but if there were a
hard-working man in Europe, that man was Philip II. And there he sat at
his table, scrawling his apostilles. The fine innumerable threads which
stretched across the surface of Christendom, and covered it as with a
net, all converged in that silent cheerless cell. France was kept in a
state of perpetual civil war; the Netherlands had been converted into a