litical
firmament, the sages and high-priests who assumed to direct human action
and to foretell human destiny, should now be more than ever perplexed.

Spain, since the accession of Philip III. to his father's throne,
although rapidly declining in vital energy, had not yet disclosed its
decrepitude to the world. Its boundless ambition survived as a political
tradition rather than a real passion, while contemporaries still trembled
at the vision of universal monarchy in which the successor of Charlemagne
and of Charles V. was supposed to indulge.

Meantime, no feebler nor more insignificant mortal existed on earth than
this dreaded sovereign.

Scarcely a hairdresser or lemonade-dealer in all Spain was less cognizant
of the political affairs of the kingdom than was its monarch, for
Philip's first care upon assuming the crown was virtually to abdicate in
favour of the man soon afterwards known as the Duke of Lerma.

It is therefore only by courtesy and for convenience that history
recognizes his existence at all, as surely no human being in the reign of
Philip III. requires less mention than Philip III. himself.

I reserve for a subsequent chapter such rapid glances at the interior
condition of that kingdom with which it seemed the destiny of the Dutch
republic to be perpetually at war, as may be necessary to illustrate the
leading characteristics of the third Philip's reign.

Meantime, as the great queen was no more, who was always too sagacious to
doubt that the Dutch cause was her own--however disposed she might be to
browbeat the Dutchmen--it seemed possible to Spain that the republic
might at last be deprived of its only remaining ally. Tassis was
despatched as chief of a legation, precursory to a more stately embassy
to be confided to the Duke of Frias. The archdukes sent the prince of
Arenberg, while from the United States came young Henry of Nassau,
associated with John of Olden-Barneveld, Falk, Brederode, and other
prominent statesmen of the commonwealth. Ministers from Denmark and
Sweden, from the palatinate and from numerous other powers, small and
great, were also collected to greet the rising sun in united Britain,
while the, awkward Scotchman, who was now called upon to play that
prominent part in the world's tragi-comedy which had been so long and so
majestically sustained by the "Virgin Queen," already began to tremble at
the plaudits and the bustle which announced how much was expected of the
new pe