into the depths
of his subject, so far as was possible in an address of ceremony. He
besought the king not to permit Spain, standing on the neck of the
provinces, to grasp from that elevation at other empires. He reminded
James of his duty to save those of his own religion from the clutch of a
sanguinary superstition, to drive away those lurking satellites of the
Roman pontiff who considered Britain their lawful prey. He implored him
to complete the work so worthily begun by Elizabeth. If all those bound
by one interest should now, he urged, unite their efforts, the Spaniard,
deprived not only of the Netherlands, but, if he were not wise in time,
banished from the ocean and stripped of all his transmarine possessions,
would be obliged to consent to a peace founded on the only secure basis,
equality of strength. The envoy concluded by beseeching the king for
assistance to Ostend, now besieged for two years long.

But James manifested small disposition to melt in the fervour of the
Advocate's eloquence. He answered with a few cold commonplaces. Benignant
but extremely cautious, he professed goodwill enough to the States but
quite as much for Spain, a power with which, he observed, he had never
quarrelled, and from which he had received the most friendly offices. The
archdukes, too, he asserted, had never been hostile to the realm, but
only to the Queen of England. In brief, he was new to English affairs,
required time to look about him, but would not disguise that his genius
was literary, studious, and tranquil, and much more inclined to peace
than to war.

In truth, James had cause to look very sharply about him. It required an
acute brain and steady nerves to understand and to control the whirl of
parties and the conflict of interests and intrigues, the chameleon
shiftings of character and colour, at this memorable epoch of transition
in the realm which he had just inherited. There was a Scotch party,
favourable on the whole to France; there was a Spanish party, there was
an English party, and, more busy than all, there was a party--not Scotch,
nor French, nor English, nor Spanish--that un-dying party in all
commonwealths or kingdoms which ever fights for itself and for the
spoils.

France and Spain had made peace with each other at Vervins five years
before, and had been at war ever since.

Nothing could be plainer nor more cynical than the language exchanged
between the French monarch and the representative of Sp