etermination of
Philip II. to put down the revolt of the Netherlands was part of an
extensive scheme, which involved the conquest of England and France,
the extermination of Protestantism, and the subjection of Europe to
the despotic sway of Spain and Rome. The interest of the history is
therefore European. To grasp it requires a knowledge of the minutest
threads of a tangled web of intrigue which spread from the Escorial to
the North Sea. This knowledge Mr. Motley has obtained. The cabinets of
Spain, England, and France have yielded up their inmost secrets to his
indefatigable research. He peeps over the shoulder of Philip, and reads
the despatch by which he intends to outwit Walsingham,--and in a second
of time is peeping over the shoulder of Walsingham, to see what the
latter is doing to outwit Philip. There is something inexpressibly
stimulating to curiosity in watching the movements of the nimble
historian as he speeds from one cabinet to another, and, the invisible
spy in the councils of all, detects the misconceptions and blunders
of each. In this complicated game of craft, policy, and passion, our
historian is the first writer who has arrived at the knowledge of the
cards which each player held in his hand at the time the game was
played.

In 1584, the subjugation of the Netherlands seemed to be but a question
of time; and the disparity between the power of Spain and that of her
revolted provinces is thus strikingly stated:--

"The contest between those seven meagre provinces upon the sand-banks
of the North Sea and the great Spanish Empire seemed at the moment with
which we are now occupied a sufficiently desperate one. Throw a
glance upon the map of Europe. Look at the broad, magnificent Spanish
Peninsula, stretching across eight degrees of latitude and ten of
longitude, commanding the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, with a genial
climate, warmed in winter by the vast furnace of Africa, and protected
from the scorching heats of summer by shady mountain and forest and
temperate breezes from either ocean. A generous southern territory,
flowing with wine and oil and all the richest gifts of a bountiful
Nature,--splendid cities,--the new and daily expanding Madrid, rich in
the trophies of the most artistic period of the modern world,--Cadiz, as
populous at that day as London, seated by the straits where the ancient
and modern systems of traffic were blending like the mingling of the two
oceans,--Granada, the anc