but a province; yet nothing could surpass the steadiness with which the
conflict was awaited.

For, during all the months of suspense; the soldiers and sailors, and
many statesman of England, had deprecated, even as the Hollanders had
been doing, the dangerous delays of Ostend. Elizabeth was not embodying
the national instinct, when she talked of peace; and shrank penuriously
from the expenses of war. There was much disappointment, even
indignation, at the slothfulness with which the preparations for defence
went on, during the period when there was yet time to make them. It was
feared with justice that England, utterly unfortified as were its cities,
and defended only by its little navy without, and by untaught enthusiasm
within, might; after all, prove an easier conquest than Holland and
Zeeland, every town, in whose territory bristled with fortifications.
If the English ships--well-trained and swift sailors as they were--were
unprovided with spare and cordage, beef and biscuit, powder and shot,
and the militia-men, however enthusiastic, were neither drilled nor
armed, was it so very certain, after all, that successful resistance
would be made to the great Armada, and to the veteran pikemen and
musketeers of Farnese, seasoned on a hundred, battlefields, and equipped
as for a tournament? There was generous confidence and chivalrous
loyalty on the part of Elizabeth's naval and military commanders; but
there had been deep regret and disappointment at her course.

Hawkins was anxious, all through the winter and spring, to cruise with a
small squadron off the coast of Spain. With a dozen vessels he undertook
to "distress anything that went through the seas." The cost of such a
squadron, with eighteen hundred men, to be relieved every four months, he
estimated at two thousand seven hundred pounds sterling the month, or a
shilling a day for each man; and it would be a very unlucky month, he