uke," she wrote to her envoys, "that we have
tolerated so many weeks in tarrying a commission, that I will never
endure more delays. Let him know he deals with a prince who prizes her
honour more than her life: Make yourselves such as stand of your
reputations."

Sharp words, but not sharp enough to prevent a further delay of a month;
for it was not till the 6th June that the commissioners at last came
together at Bourbourg, that "miserable little hole," on the coast between
Ostend and Newport, against which Gamier had warned them. And now there
was ample opportunity to wrangle at full length on the next preliminary,
the cessation of arms. It would be superfluous to follow the altercations
step by step--for negotiations there were none--and it is only for the
sake of exhibiting at full length the infamy of diplomacy, when diplomacy
is unaccompanied by honesty, that we are hanging up this series of
pictures at all. Those bloodless encounters between credulity and vanity
upon one side, and gigantic fraud on the other, near those very sands of
Newport, and in sight of the Northern Ocean, where, before long, the most
terrible battles, both by land and sea, which the age had yet witnessed,
were to occur, are quite as full of instruction and moral as the most
sanguinary combats ever waged.

At last the commissioners exchanged copies of their respective powers.
After four months of waiting and wrangling, so much had been achieved--a
show of commissions and a selection of the place for conference. And now
began the long debate about the cessation of arms. The English claimed an
armistice for the whole dominion of Philip and Elizabeth respectively,
during the term of negotiation, and for twenty days after. The Spanish
would grant only a temporary truce, terminable at six days' notice, and
that only for the four cautionary towns of Holland held by the Queen.
Thus Philip would be free to invade England at his leisure out of the
obedient Netherlands or Spain. This was inadmissible, of course, but a
week was spent at the outset in reducing the terms to writing; and when
the Duke's propositions were at last produced in the French tongue, they
were refused by the Queen's commissioners, who required that the
documents should be in Latin. Great was the triumph of Dr. Dale, when,
after another interval, he found their Latin full of barbarisms and
blunders, at which a school-boy would have blushed. The King's
commissioners, however, whil