oldiers for as brief a period as possible, serving at her expense, and
to take for such outlay a most ample security in the shape of cautionary
towns.

Too intelligent a politician not to feel the absolute necessity of at
last coming into the field to help the Netherlanders to fight her own
battle, she was still willing, for a season longer, to wear the mask of
coyness and coquetry, which she thought most adapted to irritate the
Netherlanders into a full compliance with her wishes. Her advisers in the
Provinces were inclined to take the same view. It seemed obvious, after
the failure in France, that those countries must now become either
English or Spanish; yet Elizabeth, knowing the risk of their falling
back, from desperation, into the arms of her rival, allowed them to
remain for a season on the edge of destruction--which would probably have
been her ruin also--in the hope of bringing them to her feet on her own
terms. There was something of feminine art in this policy, and it was not
without the success which often attends such insincere manoeuvres. At the
same time, as the statesmen of the republic knew that it was the Queen's
affair, when so near a neighbour's roof was blazing, they entertained
little doubt of ultimately obtaining her alliance. It was pity--in so
grave an emergency--that a little frankness could not have been
substituted for a good deal of superfluous diplomacy.

Gilpin, a highly intelligent agent of the English government in Zeeland,
kept Sir Francis Walsingham thoroughly informed of the sentiments
entertained by the people of that province towards England. Mixing
habitually with the most influential politicians, he was able to render
material assistance to the English council in the diplomatic game which
had been commenced, and on which a no less important stake than the crown
of England was to be hazarded.

"In conference," he said, "with particular persons that bear any rule or
credit, I find a great inclination towards her Majesty, joined
notwithstanding with a kind of coldness. They allege that matters of such
importance are to be maturely and thoroughly pondered, while some of them
harp upon the old string, as if her Majesty, for the security of her own
estate, was to have the more care of theirs here."

He was also very careful to insinuate the expediency of diplomatic
coquetry into the mind of a Princess who needed no such prompting. "The
less by outward appearance," said he, "this peo