eminent sovereign in the world. The industrious Philip, safe and
tranquil in the depths of the Escorial, saying his prayers three times
a day with exemplary regularity, had just sent three bullets through the
body of William the Silent at his dining-room door in Delft. "Had it
only been done two years earlier," observed the patient old man, "much
trouble might have been spared me; but 'tis better late than never." Sir
Edward Stafford, English envoy in Paris, wrote to his government--so soon
as the news of the murder reached him--that, according to his information
out of the Spanish minister's own house, "the same practice that had been
executed upon the Prince of Orange, there were practisers more than two
or three about to execute upon her Majesty, and that within two months."
Without vouching for the absolute accuracy of this intelligence, he
implored the Queen to be more upon her guard than ever. "For there is no
doubt," said the envoy, "that she is a chief mark to shoot at; and seeing
that there were men cunning enough to inchant a man and to encourage him
to kill the Prince of Orange, in the midst of Holland, and that there was
a knave found desperate enough to do it, we must think hereafter that
anything may be done. Therefore God preserve her Majesty."

Invisible as the Grand Lama of Thibet, clothed with power as extensive
and absolute as had ever been wielded by the most imperial Caesar, Philip
the Prudent, as he grew older and feebler in mind and body seemed to
become more gluttonous of work, more ambitious to extend his sceptre over
lands which he had never seen or dreamed of seeing, more fixed in his
determination to annihilate that monster Protestantism, which it had been
the business of his life to combat, more eager to put to death every
human creature, whether anointed monarch or humble artizan, that defended
heresy or opposed his progress to universal empire.

If this enormous power, this fabulous labour, had, been wielded or