thout prudence,
ambitious without enterprise, false without deceiving any body, and
refined without any true judgment; such was the character of Philip, and
such the character which, during his lifetime, and after his death, he
impressed on the Spanish councils. Revolted or depopulated provinces,
discontented or indolent inhabitants, were the spectacles which those
dominions, lying in every climate of the globe, presented to Philip
III., a weak prince, and to the duke of Lerma, a minister weak and
odious. But though military discipline, which still remained, was what
alone gave some appearance of life and vigor to that languishing body,
yet so great was the terror produced by former power and ambition,
that the reduction of the house of Austria was the object of men's vows
throughout all the states of Christendom. It was not perceived, that the
French empire, now united in domestic peace, and governed by the most
heroic and most amiable prince that adorns modern story, was become, of
itself, a sufficient counterpoise to the Spanish greatness. Perhaps that
prince himself did not perceive it, when he proposed, by his minister, a
league with James, in conjunction with Venice, the United Provinces, and
the northern crowns, in order to attack the Austrian dominions on every
side, and depress the exorbitant power of that ambitious family.[*]
But the genius of the English monarch was not equal to such vast
enterprises. The love of peace was his ruling passion; and it was his
peculiar felicity, that the conjunctures of the times rendered the same
object which was agreeable to him in the highest degree advantageous to
his people.

The French ambassador, therefore, was obliged to depart from these
extensive views, and to concert with James the means of providing for
the safety of the United Provinces: nor was this object altogether
without its difficulties. The king, before his accession, had
entertained scruples with regard to the revolt of the Low Countries; and
being commonly open and sincere,[**] he had, on many occasions, gone so
far as to give to the Dutch the appellation of rebels; [***] but having
conversed more fully with English ministers and courtiers, he found
their attachment to that republic so strong, and their opinion of common
interest so established, that he was obliged to sacrifice to politics
his sense of justice; a quality which, even when erroneous, is
respectable as well as rare in a monarch.

* Sull