manner--which few women, once impressed by them, could ever forget--he
possessed the most insidious and flattering eloquence, and, in absence,
his pen was as wily as his tongue. For the Earl was imbued with the very
genius of courtship. None was better skilled than he in the phrases of
rapturous devotion, which were music to the ear both of the woman and the
Queen; and he knew his royal mistress too well not to be aware that the
language of passionate idolatry, however extravagant, had rarely fallen
unheeded upon her soul. It was strange therefore, that in this
emergency, he should not at once throw himself upon her compassion
without any mediator. Yet, on the contrary, he committed the monstrous
error of entrusting his defence to envoy Davison, whom he determined to
despatch at once with instructions to the Queen, and towards whom he
committed the grave offence of concealing from him her previous
prohibitions. But how could the Earl fail to perceive that it was the
woman, not the Queen, whom be should have implored for pardon; that it
was Robert Dudley, not William Davison, who ought to have sued upon his
knees. This whole matter of the Netherland sovereignty and the Leicester
stadholderate, forms a strange psychological study, which deserves and
requires some minuteness of attention; for it was by the characteristics
of these eminent personages that tho current history was deeply stamped.

Certainly, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, the first letter
conveying intelligence so likely to pique the pride of Elizabeth, should
have been a letter from Leicester. On the contrary, it proved to be a
dull formal epistle from the States.

And here again the assistance of the indispensable Davison was considered
necessary. On the 3rd February the ambassador--having announced his
intention of going to England, by command of his Excellency, so soon as
the Earl should have been inaugurated, for the purpose of explaining all