himself to that government that if the Protestants in Bohemia continued rebellious, he would do his best to frustrate their designs, and would induce his son-in-law to have no further connection with them.  And Spain delighted his heart not by immediately sending over the Infanta, but by proposing that he should mediate between the contending parties.  It would be difficult to imagine a greater farce.  All central Europe was now in arms.  The deepest and gravest questions about which men can fight:  the right to worship God according to their conscience and to maintain civil franchises which have been earned by the people with the blood and treasure of centuries, were now to be solved by the sword, and the pupil of Buchanan and the friend of Buckingham was to step between hundreds of thousands of men in arms with a classical oration.  But James was very proud of the proposal and accepted it with alacrity.

“You know, my dear son,” he wrote to Frederic, “that we are the only king in Europe that is sought for by friend and foe for his mediation.  It would be for this our lofty part very unbecoming if we were capable of favouring one of the parties.  Your suggestion that we might secretly support the Bohemians we must totally reject, as it is not our way to do anything that we would not willingly confess to the whole world.”

And to do James justice, he had never fed Frederic with false hopes, never given a penny for his great enterprise, nor promised him a penny.  He had contented himself with suggesting from time to time that he might borrow money of the States-General.  His daughter Elizabeth must take care of herself, else what would become of her brother’s marriage to the daughter of Spain.

And now it was war to the knife, in which it was impossible that Holland, as well as all the other great powers should not soon be involved.  It was disheartening to the cause of freedom and progress, not only that the great kingdom on which the world, had learned to rely in all movements upward and onward should be neutralized by the sycophancy of its monarch to the general oppressor, but that the great republic which so long had taken the lead in maintaining the liberties of Europe should now be torn by religious discord within itself, and be turning against the great statesman who had so wisely guided her councils and so accurately foretold the catastrophe which was now upon the world.

Meantime the Emperor Matthias, not less forlorn than through his intrigues and rebellions his brother Rudolph had been made, passed his days in almost as utter retirement as if he had formally abdicated.  Ferdinand treated him as if in his dotage.  His fair young wife too had died of hard eating in the beginning of the winter to his inexpressible grief, so that there was nothing left to solace him now but the Rudolphian Museum.