Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/42

 22 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 57. which burst loose in the following year in Paris could have been held under effective restraint, yet those who saw that crisis coming upon them believed at the time that by the marriage of the Queen of England with one of these Princes, and by that alone, fetters would have been forged of sufficient strength to bind it. The attention of the people would have reverted to the old current ; national enthusiasm would have taken the place of religious bigotry ; and France and England, linked together by a stronger bond than words, would have freed the Netherlands from Spain. The Catholic States of Germany could have been swept into the stream of the Reformation, and Europe might have escaped the thirty years' war, and the Revolution of '89. If it be supposed that public interest, however great, could not have required the Queen to devote her person and happiness in a union which she disliked, there is no excuse for the false and foolish trifling which ex- hausted the patience and irritated the pride of the Royal family of France, and weakened the already too feeble barriers which were keeping back the tide of Catholic fury. The reader will always turn with pleasure from Elizabeth's matrimonial insincerities. At home she submitted more entirely to Cecil's guidance, and thus bore herself with a dignity and a wisdom more becoming in an English Sovereign. It appeared beyond doubt that the body of the Peers had in various degrees been parties to the Ridolfi con-