of a soldier of fortune—­the ill temper of a monk—­the mutual venom of Italian houses—­above all, the perpetual rivalry of the two great historical families who owned the greater part of Europe between them as their private property—­such were the wheels on which rolled the destiny of Christendom.  Compared to these, what were great moral and political ideas, the plans of statesmen, the hopes of nations?  Time was soon to show.  Meanwhile, government continued to be administered exclusively for the benefit of the governors.  Meanwhile, a petty war for paltry motives was to precede the great spectacle which was to prove to Europe that principles and peoples still existed, and that a phlegmatic nation of merchants and manufacturers could defy the powers of the universe, and risk all their blood and treasure, generation after generation, in a sacred cause.

It does not belong to our purpose to narrate the details of the campaign in Italy; neither is this war of politics and chicane of any great interest at the present day.  To the military minds of their age, the scientific duel which now took place upon a large scale, between two such celebrated captains as the Dukes of Guise and Alva, was no doubt esteemed the most important of spectacles; but the progress of mankind in the art of slaughter has stripped so antiquated an exhibition of most of its interest, even in a technical point of view.  Not much satisfaction could be derived from watching an old-fashioned game of war, in which the parties sat down before each other so tranquilly, and picked up piece after piece, castle after castle, city after city, with such scientific deliberation as to make it evident that, in the opinion of the commanders, war was the only serious business to be done in the world; that it was not to be done in a hurry, nor contrary to rule, and that when a general had a good job upon his hands he ought to know his profession much too thoroughly, to hasten through it before he saw his way clear to another.  From the point of time, at the close of the year 1556, when that well-trained but not very successful soldier, Strozzi, crossed the Alps, down to the autumn of the following year, when the Duke of Alva made his peace with the Pope, there was hardly a pitched battle, and scarcely an event of striking interest.  Alva, as usual, brought his dilatory policy to bear upon his adversary with great effect.  He had no intention, he observed to a friend, to stake the whole kingdom of Naples against a brocaded coat of the Duke of Guise.  Moreover, he had been sent to the war, as Ruy Gomez informed the Venetian ambassador, “with a bridle in his mouth.”  Philip, sorely troubled in his mind at finding himself in so strange a position as this hostile attitude to the Church, had earnestly interrogated all the doctors and theologians with whom he habitually took counsel, whether this war with the Pope would not work a forfeiture of his title of the Most Catholic King.  The Bishop of Arras