ainst the
reformed churches of Europe.

For several days fears were entertained for the safety of Walsingham
himself, who had not dared to transmit any account of the event except
one by a servant of his own, whose passage had been by some accident
delayed. Even this minister, cautious and crafty and sagacious as he
was, assisted by all the spies whom he constantly kept in pay, had been
unable to penetrate any part of the bloody secret;--he was completely
taken by surprise. But of his personal safety the perfidious young king
and his detestable mother were, for their own sakes, careful; and not
only were himself and his servants protected from injury, but every
Englishman who had the presence of mind to take shelter in his house
found it an inviolable sanctuary. Two persons only of this nation fell
victims to the fury of that direful night, but the property of many was
plundered. The afflicted remnant of the French protestants prepared to
stand upon their defence with all the intrepidity of despair. They
closed the gates of Rochelle, their strong hold, against the king's
troops, casting at the same time an imploring eye towards England,
where thousands of brave and generous spirits were burning with
impatience to hasten to their succour.

No act would have been hailed with such loud and general applause of her
people as an instant renunciation by Elizabeth of all friendship and
intercourse with the perjured and blood-stained Charles, the midnight
assassin of his own subjects; and it is impossible to contemplate
without disdain the coldness and littleness of that character which, in
such a case, could consent to measure its demonstrations of indignation
and abhorrence by the narrow rules of a self-interested caution. But
that early experience of peril and adversity which had formed the mind
of this princess to penetration, wariness, and passive courage, and
given her a perfect command of the whole art of simulation and
dissimulation, had at the same time robbed her of some of the noblest
impulses of our nature; of generosity, of ardor, of enterprise, of
magnanimity. Where more exalted spirits would only have felt, she
calculated; where bolder ones would have flown to action, she contented
herself with words.

Charles and his mother, while still in uncertainty how far their
master-stroke of policy,--so they regarded it,--would be successful in
crushing entirely the Hugonots, prudently resolved to spare no efforts
to p