;--there was strong ground to
suspect that he had sent one of his ablest generals in embassy to
England with no other view than to have taken the command of the
northern rebels, had their enterprise prospered;--and the intimate
participation of his agents in all the intrigues of the queen of Scots
was notorious. Dr. Wylson, a learned civilian, an accomplished scholar,
and one of the first refiners of English prose, had published in 1571,
with the express view of rousing the spirit of his readers against this
formidable tyrant, a version of the Orations of Demosthenes against the
king Philip of his day, and had been at the pains of pointing out in the
notes coincidences in the situation of Athens and of England. The
author, who was an earnest protestant, had the further motive in this
work of paying a tribute to the memory of the learned and unfortunate
Cheke, who during his voluntary exile had read gratuitous lectures to
his countrymen at Padua on the works of the great Grecian orator, of
which Wylson had been an auditor, and who had also made a Latin version
of them, of which the English translator freely availed himself.

It was principally her dread of the Spaniards which led Elizabeth into
those perpetual reciprocations of deceitful professions and empty
negotiations with the profligate and perfidious court of France, which
in the judgement of posterity have redounded so little to her honor, but
which appeared to her of so much importance that she now thought herself
peculiarly fortunate in having discovered an agent capable of conducting
with all the wariness, penetration and profound address so peculiarly
requisite where sincerity and good faith are wanting. This agent was sir
Francis Walsingham, whose rare acquisitions of political knowledge, made
principally during the period of his voluntary exile for religion, and
still rarer talents for public business, had induced lord Burleigh to
recommend him to the service and confidence of his mistress. For several
years from this time he resided as the queen's ambassador at the court
of France, at first as coadjutor to sir Thomas Smith,--a learned and
able man, who afterwards became a principal secretary of state,--the
rest of the time alone. There was not in England a man who was regarded
as a more sincere and earnest protestant than Walsingham; yet such was
at this time his sense of the importance to the country of the French
alliance, that he expressed himself strongl