tion of Italy, and important dependencies in Africa,
while the famous maritime discoveries of the age had all enured to her
aggrandizement. The world seemed suddenly to have expanded its wings from
East to West, only to bear the fortunate Spanish Empire to the most dizzy
heights of wealth and power. The most accomplished generals, the most
disciplined and daring infantry the world has ever known, the
best-equipped and most extensive navy, royal and mercantile, of the age,
were at the absolute command of the sovereign. Such was Spain.

Turn now to the north-western corner of Europe. A morsel of territory,
attached by a slight sand-hook to the continent, and half-submerged by
the stormy waters of the German Ocean--this was Holland. A rude climate,
with long, dark, rigorous, winters, and brief summers, a territory, the
mere wash of three great rivers, which had fertilized happier portions of
Europe only to desolate and overwhelm this less-favoured land, a soil so
ungrateful, that if the whole of its four hundred thousand acres of
arable land had been sowed with grain, it could not feed the labourers
alone, and a population largely estimated at one million of souls--these
were the characteristics of the Province which already had begun to give
its name to the new commonwealth. The isles of Zeeland--entangled in the
coils of deep slow-moving rivers, or combating the ocean without--and the
ancient episcopate of Utrecht, formed the only other Provinces that had
quite shaken off the foreign yoke. In Friesland, the important city of
Groningen was still held for the King, while Bois-le-Duc, Zutphen,
besides other places in Gelderland and North Brabant, also in possession
of the royalists, made the position of those provinces precarious.

The limit of the Spanish or "obedient" Provinces, on the one hand, and of
the United Provinces on the other, cannot, therefore, be briefly and
distinctly stated. The memorable treason--or, as it was called, the
"reconciliation" of the Walloon Provinces in the year 1583-4--had placed
the Provinces of Hainault, Arthois, Douay, with the flourishing cities
Arran, Valenciennes, Lille, Tournay, and others--all Celtic Flanders, in
short-in the grasp of Spain. Cambray was still held by the French
governor, Seigneur de Balagny, who had taken advantage of the Duke of
Anjou's treachery to the States, to establish himself in an unrecognized
but practical petty sovereignty, in defiance both of France and Spain