The present volumes of Mr. Motley’s History begin with the murder of William of Orange, in 1584, and extend only to the assassination of Henry HI. of France, in 1589.  These five years, however, are crowded with individuals and events of special importance, and the historian has shed new light on every topic he has touched.  The determination of Philip II. to put down the revolt of the Netherlands was part of an extensive scheme, which involved the conquest of England and France, the extermination of Protestantism, and the subjection of Europe to the despotic sway of Spain and Rome.  The interest of the history is therefore European.  To grasp it requires a knowledge of the minutest threads of a tangled web of intrigue which spread from the Escorial to the North Sea.  This knowledge Mr. Motley has obtained.  The cabinets of Spain, England, and France have yielded up their inmost secrets to his indefatigable research.  He peeps over the shoulder of Philip, and reads the despatch by which he intends to outwit Walsingham,—­and in a second of time is peeping over the shoulder of Walsingham, to see what the latter is doing to outwit Philip.  There is something inexpressibly stimulating to curiosity in watching the movements of the nimble historian as he speeds from one cabinet to another, and, the invisible spy in the councils of all, detects the misconceptions and blunders of each.  In this complicated game of craft, policy, and passion, our historian is the first writer who has arrived at the knowledge of the cards which each player held in his hand at the time the game was played.

In 1584, the subjugation of the Netherlands seemed to be but a question of time; and the disparity between the power of Spain and that of her revolted provinces is thus strikingly stated:—­

“The contest between those seven meagre provinces upon the sand-banks of the North Sea and the great Spanish Empire seemed at the moment with which we are now occupied a sufficiently desperate one.  Throw a glance upon the map of Europe.  Look at the broad, magnificent Spanish Peninsula, stretching across eight degrees of latitude and ten of longitude, commanding the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, with a genial climate, warmed in winter by the vast furnace of Africa, and protected from the scorching heats of summer by shady mountain and forest and temperate breezes from either ocean.  A generous southern territory, flowing with wine and oil and all the richest gifts of a bountiful Nature,—­splendid cities,—­the new and daily expanding Madrid, rich in the trophies of the most artistic period of the modern world,—­Cadiz, as populous at that day as London, seated by the straits where the ancient and modern systems of traffic were blending like the mingling of the two oceans,—­Granada, the ancient wealthy seat of the fallen Moors,—­Toledo, Valladolid, and Lisbon, chief city of the recently conquered kingdom of Portugal, counting, with its suburbs, a larger population than any city, excepting Paris, in Europe, the mother of distant colonies, and the capital of the rapidly developing traffic with both the Indies:  these were some of the treasures of Spain herself.  But she possessed Sicily also, the better portion of Italy, and important dependencies in Africa, while the famous maritime discoveries of the age had all inured to her aggrandizement.