Bold Attitude of England-The Armada sails. 321

bloody encounter, derided the boasted strength of the Armada. 'I doubt not,' he wrote, joyfully, that they shall be sought and 'encountered in such sort as will qualify, I hope, their malicious 'and long-pretended practices; and the tone of Lord Howard is equally positive. The generals and soldiers, untrained as they were, and inferior in art to Parma and his legions, were not less determined in their attitude; and many of them, doubtless, remembered the day when, on the glorious plain of Warnsfield, a handful of Englishmen had put to flight almost an army of Spanish veterans. In an age when every Englishman was armed, and the line between regular and irregular troops was not nearly so deeply marked as at present, we can well believe that these patriot levies, which probably exceeded a hundred thousand men, and was supported by the nation at their back, would have proved a tolerably formidable foe to Parma and thirty thousand Spaniards, even had a successful landing been accomplished. Thus England was ready for any emergency, on sea and land, her two lines of defence; and Mr. Motley, in describing her position towards the close of 1587, has, we think, entirely underrated her resources.

At length, at the end of July, 1588, the Invincible Armada, which had left Lisbon on the 28th of the previous May, and had been a good deal injured by the weather, reached the longexpected coasts of England. There were about one hundred and thirty vessels of war-unwieldy, slow, and unmanageable structures and a large fleet of transports and victualling ships. The Duke of Medina Sidonia commanded; and his orders were, according to the plan of which we have already given the outline, to overpower opposition in the Channel, to effect a junction with Parma off Dunkirk, and to convoy over that general and his army. In a certain sense the attack was a surprise, for, hearing of the storms which had met the Spaniards after leaving Lisbon at the close of May, the Queen believed the invasion postponed; and this too was the judgment of Europe. But all her preparations were completed; the land forces were ready to rise the instant the beacons summoned them to arms; one of her squadrons, under Lord Henry Seymour, was cruising off the French and Flemish coasts; her main fleet, under Drake and Howard, was waiting for the enemy in the neighbourhood of Plymouth; and the powerful navy of Holland and Zeeland was watching Parma off the shores of Flanders. The allied fleets which thus lined the Channel comprised, probably, three hundred ships; and though in tonnage and weight of metal they fell far short of the Great Armada, they were really a much more formidable force,

being quick in manoeuvring, and easily handled; and, above all, admirably manned and commanded. Neither Nelson, when he bore down on Villeneuve on that glorious though mournful day in October, nor Cochrane, when he led his fire-ships against the squadron in Basque Roads, were more hopeful of a signal triumph than were Drake, Hawkins, Howard, and Frobisher, as on the 1st of August, 1588, they marked that dark fleet lying, heaving for miles on the summer sea, off the slopes of Devonshire. We have now the army of Spain before us,' wrote Drake, in his tone of joyous confidence, and hope, with the grace of God, to wrestle a fall with him.'

We shall not dwell on the events which followed, and which, viewed even now in the distance, still stir the blood and the spirit of Englishmen. Every schoolboy knows how the English fleet, though unsupported by Seymour's squadron, assailed at once its cumbrous antagonist; how its real superiority in gunnery and seamanship was proved conclusively in the first encounter; how, as day after day the contending fleets swept slowly onwards along the Channel, the inefficiency of the Invincible Armada became more and more apparent; how feather after feather was plucked from the Spaniards,' and ship after ship taken gallantly from them without any injury to the English; how, 'shuffled and hustled from the Lizard to Dover,' the Armada at last reached its station at Calais with the entire navy of England in front of it, and sealing up the opening of the Roads; how baffled, panicstricken, and dismayed, it was driven out of Calais by a few fireships, and cut off from the chance of a junction with Parma; how its nimble adversary caught it off Gravelines, and smote it with such tremendous force that it never ventured to show fight again; how from that day its only object was to save itself by a precipitate flight, without a thought of Parma and his flotilla, or of the intended invasion of England; how Parma, maddened at Sidonia's failure, betook himself back again to his camp 'like a bear,' as was said, 'when robbed of her whelps; how that mighty armament which had lately towered on the August sea in its stately pride, was scattered to fragments by the storms of the north, and strewed a hundred beaches with its wrecks; and how, of that huge assemblage of power-ships, soldiers, seamen, and engines of war-which had met together in Lisbon Bay, only a feeble, broken, and mutilated remnant ever reached again a place of safety. The history of those eventful days is best summed up in the words of Drake: 'Their invincible and dreadful navy, driven with squibs from their anchors, and chased out of sight of Eng'land, about Scotland and Ireland, did not so much in all

Ruin of the Armada-Mr. Motley's Account.

323

'their sailing about England as sink or take one ship, bark, 'pinnace, or cockboat of ours, or even burn so much as one sheep'cote in our land.'

*

Mr. Motley's account of this mighty drama is full, minute, and occasionally eloquent, but we venture to think that in some respects it is far from accurate in its conclusions. In reference to the naval operations, which ended in the failure of the invasion, Mr. Motley has underrated the results obtained by the English fleet, and has given by far too great a prominence to the work done by the Dutch squadrons. He does not attempt, indeed, to deny that the English fleet defeated the Spaniards in the long chase from Cornwall to Calais, and in the decisive engagement off Gravelines; but he rather depreciates the effects of these events, and maintains that, until the last moment, Medina Sidonia might have been the victor. We think this opinion is quite in error, and contradicted fully by the evidence. If the Spaniards, as Bacon has well pointed out, had ever had a chance of success, it was when they met the English fleet without the squadron of Lord Henry Seymour; nor can we doubt that they did their best to bring our fleet to effective action, to overpower it, and possess the Channel. In fact, however, they were thoroughly beaten, even by a part of the English fleet, before they reached the roads of Calais, and, after the junction of Seymour and Howard, they had not the slightest prospect of victory. Their conduct at Calais, when the Armada was driven from its anchorage by a few fire-ships, can be only ascribed to desperate panic, and the glorious battle off Gravelines was nearly as decisive as that of Trafalgar. Indeed, as Mr. Motley tells us himself, Medina Sidonia, after that great day, was actually about to surrender at discretion, and he never again attempted a stand, or thought of resuming his communications with Parma. These facts surely entitle us to say that, even from the first, the English fleet was alone the absolute master of the Channel, that the Armada had never a chance of defeating it, and that, though unaided, it scattered to the winds the boasted schemes of tyranny and priestcraft.

Again, Mr. Motley seems to think that the Dutch squadrons off the coast of Flanders, which prevented Parma from embarking in his flotilla, prevented also his junction with the Armada, and that, had that junction ever taken place-which, he says, was possible in the roads of Calais on the 7th of August, 1588-the invasion of England might have been successful. He contends, therefore, that these Dutch ships were the principal cause of the failure of

Tract on Elizabeth.

the expedition, and of course that the Dutch were the saviours of our country. We differ altogether from these arguments and inferences. It is quite true that the Dutch fleet prevented Parma from putting to sea and trying to join the Armada at Calais; but it does not follow that the English fleet, without the aid of a single Dutch ship, might not either have barred the junction completely, or at least made it useless and abortive. Supposing the Dutch fleet out of the way, if Parma's flotilla, with his troops on board, had set out from Gravelines or Dunkirk, and had sought to join the Armada at Calais on the 6th of August, 1588 -the day on which Sidonia had arrived-it is quite evident that that flotilla must have forced its way through the English fleet which possessed the entrance of Calais Roads, and equally so that any such attempt could have only ended in utter destruction. Since Parma himself had declared to Philip that the fire of four men-of-war alone' would have sent his troops and flotilla to the bottom, we may guess what must have been the result had even a single squadron assailed him. On the other hand, if Parma had tried to effect a junction with the Armada at Calais by a land march from his camp in Belgium-an affair of several days at the least-it is plain that, before this could have been accomplished, the Spanish fleet, already discomfited, would have been so shattered by the English navy,* that the passage could never have been attempted. It follows, although we do not dispute the loyal service done by the Dutch in shutting up Parma within his camp, that, situated as the English and Spanish fleets were, the junction of Parma and Medina Sidonia, for any feasible purpose of invasion, was a matter beyond the range of possibility. In fact, as Parma had seen from the first, the command of the Channel was the key to success, and this was possessed by the English from the outset, and was never for an instant held by the Spaniards.

We differ also from Mr. Motley as regards the chance of the conquest of England, had Parma actually effected a landing. It seems to us absurd that a martial and agricultural population, with one hundred thousand volunteers in the field, could have been subdued by thirty thousand Spaniards. The influences which might work our downfall, in the event of any invasion in these days-the shock to credit and the ruin of trade-would have scarcely affected the England of Elizabeth; and we feel assured that the local militia-a most magnificent and formidable force-would have soon caused the enemy's annihilation.

* During the interval that navy would have been largely recruited by coasters and merchantmen more or less armed.

Iceland and its Physical Curiosities.

825

This point, however, we cannot dwell on; and indeed our. comments have run so far that we must at once conclude this article. We have differed freely from Mr. Motley in his narrative of the events of this period; and in some respects we have been obliged to condemn his method, his language, and his manner. But we should be wanting in our critical duty, did we fail to acknowledge the conscientious industry, the brilliant. genius, and the power of description which pervade and animate this interesting history.

ART. II.-(1.) Iceland: its Volcanoes, Geysers, and Glaciers. By CHARLES S. FORBES, Commander R.N. London: John Murray. 1860.

(2.) Northufari; or Rambles in Iceland. By PLINY MILES. London: Longmans. 1854.

(3.) Iceland; or the Journal of a Residence in that Island during the Years 1814 and 1815. By Dr. EBENEZER HENDERSON. 2 vols. Edinburgh: Oliphant. 1818.

(4.) Travels in Iceland. By Sir GEORGE STEWART MACKENZIE, Bart. New edition. Edinburgh: Chambers. 1842.

(5.) Journal of a Tour in Iceland in the Summer of 1809. By Sir WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER, F.L.S. 2 vols. London: Long

mans. 1813.

(6.) Visit to Iceland and the Scandinavian North. IDA PFEIFFER. London: Ingram, Cooke, and Co.

By Madame 1853.

THERE is an island on the borders of the Polar Circle where the Frost Giants and the Fire King are engaged in perpetual conflict. Which shall have the mastery is a question still unsolved, though centuries have been consumed in the strife. So equally matched are the rival powers, that neither of them can acquire any permanent ascendancy. From its proximity to the North, we might expect that the furniture of this island would be of the wintriest description, and that its mountains would be covered with snow, its gorges filled with glaciers, and its streams congealed into 'motionless torrents.' But we find that some of its hills are smoking volcanoes, that others are fuming with sulphur, that many of its plains were recently flooded with molten lava, and that the soil is pierced in all directions with pools of boiling mud and fountains of scalding water.

If St. Helena has been styled a volcanic cinder, Iceland may be called a great volcanic block. Its whole substance has been poured out of the earth's glowing entrails. There was a time