and of Calvin. The house of Austria was to be
humbled--the one branch driven back to Spain and kept there, the other
branch to be deprived of the imperial crown, which was to be disposed of
as in times past by the votes of the princely electors. There should be
two republics--the Swiss and the Dutch--each of those commonwealths to be
protected by France and England, and each to receive considerable parings
out of the possessions of Spain and the empire.

Finally, all Christendom was to be divided off into a certain number of
powers, almost exactly equal to each other; the weighing, measuring, and
counting, necessary to obtain this international equilibrium, being of
course the duty of the king and queen when they should sit some day
together at table.

Thus there were five points; sovereigns and politicians having always a
fondness for a neat summary in five or six points. Number one, to remodel
the electoral system of the holy Roman empire. Number two, to establish
the republic of the United Provinces. Number three, to do as much for
Switzerland. Number four, to partition Europe. Number five, to reduce all
religions to three. Nothing could be more majestic, no plan fuller
fraught with tranquillity for the rulers of mankind and their subjects.
Thrice happy the people, having thus a couple of heads with crowns upon
them and brains within them to prescribe what was to be done in this
world and believed as to the next!

The illustrious successor of that great queen now stretches her benignant
sceptre over two hundred millions of subjects, and the political revenues
of her empire are more than a hundredfold those of Elizabeth; yet it
would hardly now be thought great statesmanship or sound imperial policy
for a British sovereign even to imagine the possibility of the five
points which filled the royal English mind at Dover.

But Henry was as much convinced as Elizabeth of the necessity and the
possibility of establishing the five points, and De Bethune had been
astonished at the exact similarity of the conclusion which those two
sovereign intellects had reached, even before they had been placed in
communion with each other. The death of the queen had not caused any
change in the far-reaching designs of which the king now remained the
sole executor, and his first thought, on the accession of James, was
accordingly to despatch De Bethune, now created Marquis de Rosny, as
ambassador extraordinary to England, in order that