"The Spanish Court, that is, Termagant Elizabeth, who rules everybody there, being in this humor, was passionate to begin; and stood ready a good while, indignantly champing the bit, before the sad preliminary obstacles could be got over.

At Barcelona she had, in the course of last summer, doubly busy ever since Mollwitz time, got into equipment some 15,000 men; but could not by any method get them across,--owing to the British Fleets, which hung blockading this place and that; blockading Cadiz especially, where lay her Transport-ships and War-ships, at this interesting juncture.

Fleury's cunctations were disgusting to the ardent mind; and here now, still more insuperable, are the British Fleets; here--and a pest to him!--is your Admiral Haddock, blockading Cadiz, with his Seventy-fours! "But again, on the other or Pragmatic side, there were cunctations.

The Sardinian Majesty, Charles Emanuel of Savoy, holding the door of the Alps, was difficult to bargain with, in spite of British Subsidies;--stood out for higher door-fees, a larger slice of the Milanese than could be granted him; had always one ear open for France, too; in short, was tedious and capricious, and there seemed no bringing him to the point of drawing sword for her Hungarian Majesty.

In the end, he was brought to it, by a stroke of British Art,--such to the admiring Gazetteer and Diplomatic mind it seemed;--equal to anything we have since heard of, on the part of perfidious Albion.
"One day, 'middle of October last,' the Seventy-fours of Haddock and perfidious Albion,--Spanish official persons, looking out from Cadiz Light-house, ask themselves, 'Where are they?
Vanished from these waters; not a Seventy-four of them to be seen!'-- Have got foul in the underworks, or otherwise some blunder has happened; and the blockading Fleet of perfidious Albion has had to quit its post, and run to Gibraltar to refit.