-for the finger of scorn to point at.

With such a view before him it was more than ever necessary for Philip
to hurry forward the preparations which he had already commenced. The
more formidable he could make himself, the better able he would be to
frighten Elizabeth into submission.

Every dockyard in Spain was set to work, building galleons and
collecting stores. Santa Cruz would command. Philip was himself more
resolved than ever to accompany the expedition in person and dictate
from the English Channel the conditions of the pacification of Europe.

Secrecy was no longer attempted--indeed, was no longer possible. All
Latin Christendom was palpitating with expectation. At Lisbon, at Cadiz,
at Barcelona, at Naples, the shipwrights were busy night and day. The
sea was covered with vessels freighted with arms and provisions
streaming to the mouth of the Tagus. Catholic volunteers from all
nations flocked into the Peninsula, to take a share in the mighty
movement which was to decide the fate of the world, and bishops,
priests, and monks were set praying through the whole Latin Communion
that Heaven would protect its own cause.

Meantime the negotiations for peace continued, and Elizabeth, strange
to say, persisted in listening. She would not see what was plain to all
the world besides. The execution of the Queen of Scots lay on her spirit
and threw her back into the obstinate humour which had made Walsingham
so often despair of her safety. For two months after that scene at
Fotheringay she had refused to see Burghley, and would consult no one
but Sir James Crofts and her Spanish-tempered ladies. She knew that
Spain now intended that she should betray the towns in the Low
Countries, yet she was blind to the infamy which it would bring upon
her. She left her troops there without their wages to shiver into
mutiny. She named commissioners, with Sir James Crofts at their head, to
go to Ostend and treat with Parma, and if she had not resolved on an act
of treachery she at least played with the temptation, and persuaded
herself that if she chose to make over the towns to Philip, she would be
only restoring them to their lawful owner.

Burghley and Walsingham, you can see from their letters, believed now
that Elizabeth had ruined herself at last. Happily her moods were
variable as the weather. She was forced to see the condition to which
she had reduced her affairs in the Low Countries by the appearance of a
number of starv