is, although
opposed by the sleepless energy and the exuberant valour of the
quick-witted Navarre, and although encumbered by the assistance of the
ponderous Duke of Mayenne. His military reputation, through these two
famous reliefs and retreats, grew greater than ever.

No commander of the age was thought capable of doing what he had thus
done. Yet, after all, what had he accomplished? Did he not feel in his
heart of hearts that he was but a strong and most skilful swimmer
struggling for a little while against an ocean-tide which was steadily
sweeping him and his master and all their fortunes far out into the
infinite depths?

Something of this breathed ever in his most secret utterances. But, so
long as life was in him, his sword and his genius were at the disposal of
his sovereign, to carry out a series of schemes as futile as they were
nefarious.

For us, looking back upon the Past, which was then the Future, it is easy
to see how remorselessly the great current of events was washing away the
system and the personages seeking to resist its power and to oppose the
great moral principles by which human affairs in the long run are
invariably governed. Spain and Rome were endeavouring to obliterate the
landmarks of race, nationality, historical institutions, and the
tendencies of awakened popular conscience, throughout Christendom, and to
substitute for them a dead level of conformity to one regal and
sacerdotal despotism.

England, Holland, the Navarre party in France, and a considerable part of
Germany were contending for national unity and independence, for vested
and recorded rights. Much farther than they themselves or their
chieftains dreamed those millions of men were fighting for a system of
temperate human freedom; for that emancipation under just laws from
arbitrary human control, which is the right--however frequently trampled
upon--of all classes, conditions, and races of men; and for which it is
the instinct of the human race to continue to struggle under every
disadvantage, and often against all hope, throughout the ages, so long as
the very principle of humanity shall not be extinguished in those who
have been created after their Maker's image.

It may safely be doubted whether the great Queen, the Bearnese, Alexander
Farnese, or his master, with many of their respective adherents, differed
very essentially from each other in their notions of the right divine and
the right of the people. But history