To loiter thus, when mortal blows should be struck, was to give the
Spanish government exactly that of which it was always most gluttonous--
time; and the Netherlanders had none of it to spare. "With time and
myself, there are two of us," was Philip II.'s favourite observation; and
the Prince of Parma was at this moment sorely perplexed by the parsimony
and the hesitations of his own government, by which his large, swift and
most creative genius was so often hampered.

Thus the Spanish soldiers, deep in the trenches, went with bare legs and
empty stomachs in January; and the Dutchmen, among their broken dykes,
were up to their ears in mud and water; and German mercenaries, in the
obedient Provinces, were burning the peasants' houses in order to sell
the iron to buy food withal; while grave-visaged statesmen, in
comfortable cabinets, wagged their long white beards at each other from a
distance, and exchanged grimaces and protocols which nobody heeded.

Walsingham was weary of this solemn trifling. "I conclude," said he to
Davison, "that her Majesty--with reverence be it spoken--is ill advised,
to direct you in a course that is like to work so great peril. I know
you will do your best endeavour to keep all things upright, and yet it is
hard--the disease being now come to this state, or, as the physicians
term it, crisis--to carry yourself in such sort, but that it will, I
fear, breed a dangerous alteration in the cause."

He denounced with impatience, almost with indignation, the insincerity
and injustice of these intolerable hesitations. "Sorry am I," said he,
"to see the course that is taken in this weighty cause, for we will
neither help those poor countries ourselves, nor yet suffer others to
do it. I am not ignorant that in time to come the annexing of these
countries to the crown of France may prove prejudicial to England, but