He was right in his estimate of the effect likely to be produced by the war upon the military habits of Englishmen; for there can be no doubt that the organization and discipline of English troops was in anything but a satisfactory state at that period.  There was certainly vast room for improvement.  Nevertheless he was wrong in his views of the leading tendencies of his age.  Holland and England, self-helping, self-moving, were already inaugurating a new era in the history of the world.  The spirit of commercial maritime enterprise—­then expanding rapidly into large proportions—­was to be matched against the religious and knightly enthusiasm which had accomplished such wonders in an age that was passing away.  Spain still personified, and had ever personified, chivalry, loyalty, piety; but its chivalry, loyalty, and piety, were now in a corrupted condition.  The form was hollow, and the sacred spark had fled.  In Holland and England intelligent enterprise had not yet degenerated into mere greed for material prosperity.  The love of danger, the thirst for adventure, the thrilling sense of personal responsibility and human dignity—­not the base love for land and lucre—­were the governing sentiments which led those bold Dutch and English rovers to circumnavigate the world in cockle-shells, and to beard the most potent monarch on the earth, both at home and abroad, with a handful of volunteers.

This then was the contest, and this the machinery by which it was to be maintained.  A struggle for national independence, liberty of conscience, freedom of the seas, against sacerdotal and world-absorbing tyranny; a mortal combat of the splendid infantry of Spain and Italy, the professional reiters of Germany, the floating castles of a world-empire, with the militiamen and mercantile-marine of England and Holland united.  Holland had been engaged twenty years long in the conflict.  England had thus far escaped it; but there was no doubt, and could be none, that her time had come.  She must fight the battle of Protestantism on sea and shore, shoulder to shoulder, with the Netherlanders, or await the conqueror’s foot on her own soil.

What now was the disposition and what the means of the Provinces to do their part in the contest?  If the twain as Holland wished, had become of one flesh, would England have been the loser?  Was it quite sure that Elizabeth—­had she even accepted the less compromising title which she refused—­would not have been quite as much the protected as the “protectress?”

It is very certain that the English, on their arrival in the Provinces, were singularly impressed by the opulent and stately appearance of the country and its inhabitants.  Notwithstanding the tremendous war which the Hollanders had been waging against Spain for twenty years, their commerce had continued to thrive, and their resources to increase.  Leicester was in a state of constant rapture at the magnificence which surrounded him, from his first entrance into