Therefore, legislators and citizens, let us redouble our good-will.  Let all wounds be healed, all animosities extinguished; by overcoming hatred we shall overcome war; let no disturbance that may come be due to our fault.  Our task of entering into the unknown is difficult enough without angers and bitterness.  I am one of those who hope from that unknown future, but only on condition that we make use from the first of every means of pacification that is in our power.  Let us act with the virile kindness of the strong.

Let us then calm the nations by peace, and the hearts of men by brotherhood, and let us never forget that we are ourselves responsible for this last half of the nineteenth century, and that we are placed between a great past, the Revolution of France, and a great future, the Revolution of Europe.

* * * * *

MARTIN HUME

The Courtships of Elizabeth

Major Martin Andrew Hume, born in London on December 8, 1847, and educated at Madrid, comes of an English family, the members of which have resided in Spain for a hundred years.  He began life in the British Army, from which he retired with the rank of major.  Major Hume was appointed editor of the Spanish state papers published by the Record Office; he is also lecturer in Spanish History and Literature at Cambridge, and examiner and lecturer in Spanish at the Birmingham University.  He has written numerous works on the history of Spain; but perhaps he is best known for his historical studies of the Tudor period, of which may be mentioned “The Courtships of Queen Elizabeth,” “The Love Affairs of Mary Queen of Scots,” and “The Wives of Henry VIII.”  In the first-named work, published in 1896, Major Hume has presented an exceedingly interesting human document, and classified a tangled mass of material.  The epitome here presented has been prepared for the world’s greatest books by the author himself.

I.—­Foreign Philandering

The greatest diplomatic game ever played on the world’s chessboard was that consummate succession of intrigues which, for nearly half a century, was carried on by Queen Elizabeth and her ministers with the object of playing off one great Continental power against another for the benefit of England and Protestantism, with which the interests of the queen were inextricably involved.  Those in the midst of the strife worked mostly for immediate aims, and neither saw, nor cared, for the ultimate results; but we, looking back, see that out of that tangle of duplicity there emerged a new era of civilisation and a host of vigorous impulses which move us to this hour.