nor favour at court, unless distinguished for stature, strength, or extraordinary activity.  To lose a tooth had been known to cause the loss of a place, and the excellent constitution of leg which helped Sir Christopher Hatton into the chancellorship, was not more remarkable perhaps than the success of similar endowments in other contemporaries.  Leicester, although stately and imposing, had passed his summer solstice.  A big bulky man, with a long red face, a bald head, a defiant somewhat sinister eye, a high nose, and a little torrent of foam-white curly beard, he was still magnificent in costume.  Rustling in satin and feathers, with jewels in his ears, and his velvet toque stuck as airily as ever upon the side of his head, he amazed the honest Hollanders, who had been used to less gorgeous chieftains.

“Every body is wondering at the great magnificence and splendour of his clothes,” said the plain chronicler of Utrecht.  For, not much more than a year before, Fulke Greville had met at Delft a man whose external adornments were simpler; a somewhat slip-shod personage, whom he thus pourtrayed:  “His uppermost garment was a gown,” said the euphuistic Fulke, “yet such as, I confidently affirm, a mean-born student of our Inns of Court would not have been well disposed to walk the streets in.  Unbuttoned his doublet was, and of like precious matter and form to the other.  His waistcoat, which showed itself under it, not unlike the best sort of those woollen knit ones which our ordinary barge-watermen row us in.  His company about him, the burgesses of that beerbrewing town.  No external sign of degree could have discovered the inequality of his worth or estate from that multitude.  Nevertheless, upon conversing with him, there was an outward passage of inward greatness.”

Of a certainty there must have been an outward passage of inward greatness about him; for the individual in unbuttoned doublet and bargeman’s waistcoat, was no other than William the Silent.  A different kind of leader had now descended among those rebels, yet it would be a great mistake to deny the capacity or vigorous intentions of the magnificent Earl, who certainly was like to find himself in a more difficult and responsible situation than any he had yet occupied.

And now began a triumphal progress through the land, with a series of mighty banquets and festivities, in which no man could play a better part than Leicester.  From Flushing he came to Middelburg, where, upon Christmas eve (according to the new reckoning), there was an entertainment, every dish of which has been duly chronicled.  Pigs served on their feet, pheasants in their feathers, and baked swans with their necks thrust through gigantic pie-crust; crystal castles of confectionery with silver streams flowing at their base, and fair virgins leaning from the battlements, looking for their new English champion, “wine in abundance, variety of all sorts, and wonderful welcomes “—­such