Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/236

 222 REIGN OP ELIZAS ETtf. [CH. 54. another more vigorous shot from the stem ; the sap was in its veins; it would bend to the storm and gather strength from the blasts which tossed its branches. The Catholic rested upon order and tradition, stately in his habits of thought, mechanical and regular in his outward actions. His party depended on its leaders, and the leaders looked for guidance to the Pope and the European princes. The Protestant was self-dependent, confident, careless of life, believing in the future not the past, irrepressible by authority, eager to grapple with his adversary wherever he could find him, and rushing into piracy metaphorical or literal when regular warfare was denied him. Life and energy were on the side of the Queen, and every year that she could gain was a fresh security for her, while the convenient season for which Philip waited, though it arrived at last, ar- rived too late, when the hand which should execute his behests was shaking in decrepitude. These reflections however, if sound at all, are but wisdom after the event. We must return to England in the opening of the year 1570, when the vitality of Protestantism was still unproved, and the future was vacancy peopled only with its million possibilities. The rebellion, ill concerted and ill managed, had exploded without effect, but it had left the Catholics no weaker than before, embittered more deeply against Elizabeth's government, and only resolved to renew the experiment with a clearer understanding among themselves. The conspiracy, as the Regent Murray said, had its branches over the whole island ; and were