“The world seemed suddenly to have expanded its wings from East to West only to bear the fortunate Spanish Empire to the most dizzy heights of wealth and power.  The most accomplished generals, the most disciplined and daring infantry the world has ever known, the best-equipped and most extensive navy, royal and mercantile, of the age, were at the absolute command of the sovereign.  Such was Spain.

“Turn now to the north-western corner of Europe.  A morsel of territory, attached by a slight sand-hook to the continent, and half-submerged by the stormy waters of the German Ocean:  this was Holland.  A rude climate, with long, dark, rigorous winters and brief summers,—­a territory, the mere wash of three great rivers, which had fertilized happier portions of Europe only to desolate and overwhelm this less-favored land,—­a soil so ungrateful, that, if the whole of its four hundred thousand acres of arable land had been sowed with grain, it could not feed the laborers alone,—­and a population largely estimated at one million of souls:  these were the characteristics of the province which already had begun to give its name to the new commonwealth.  The isles of Zealand—­entangled in the coils of deep, slow-moving rivers, or combating the ocean without—­and the ancient episcopate of Utrecht, formed the only other provinces that had quite shaken off the foreign yoke.  In Friesland, the important city of Groningen was still held for the King; while Bois-le-Duc, Zutphen, besides other places in Gelderland and North Brabant, also in possession of the royalists, made the position of those provinces precarious.”

The safety of the Netherlands appeared to depend so entirely on their success in gaining the assistance of foreign powers, that it is not surprising that the Estates eagerly offered the sovereignty of the country, first to France and then to England.  The details of the negotiations with these powers Mr. Motley recounts at great length.  When England, at last, adopted the side of the Netherlands, and caught glimpses of the fact that the struggle of the latter against Spain was her cause no less than the cause of the Dutch, the parsimony and indecision of Elizabeth, and the hesitating counsels of her favorite minister, Burleigh, prevented the English-Dutch alliance from being efficient against the common enemy.  An incompetent general, the Earl of Leicester, was sent over to Holland with the English troops; yet even his incompetency might not have stood in the way of success, had he not been hampered with instructions which paralyzed what vigor and intelligence he possessed, and had not his soldiers been left to starve by the government they served.  Elizabeth was trying to secure a peace with Spain, while Philip and Farnese were busy in contriving the means of an invasion of England; and up to the time the Spanish Armada appeared in the British seas, she and her government were thoroughly cajoled by Spanish craft.  Mr. Motley remorselessly