very poor material, that they rotted at their moorings before they were used. Perhaps the desire to possess a great many vessels had a bad effect. When a definite sum of money has to be spent, when it is not sufficient to pay for both number and size, and when number is strongly desired, it will inevitably follow that vessels will be built of the smallest size required to carry the desired number of guns. It is certainly the case that during the latter part of the seventeenth century and nearly the whole of the eighteenth our ships were, rate for rate, smaller than the French. At one time in the eighteenth century we allowed ourselves to be outstripped so far that two English 74's were hardly more than a match in strength and tonnage for one Spanish ship of the same nominal strength. A French 80-gun ship was as large as an English man-of-war of 100 guns. This, however, was a later development. In the earlier part of the reign of Charles II. we were still superior on the whole to the Dutch in all but numbers, which in every generation and in every kind of war is the least valuable of the elements of strength. At the beginning of the second Dutch war the Duke of York wrote from Portsmouth to complain that the vessels then being built were designed on too small a scale. He argued that the Dutch could always excel us in point of number, and that it was desirable to possess a counterbalancing advantage in the size, and what followed from size, the broadside weight of fire of our individual ships. The duke's view did not prevail, but it is well worth quoting, if only to show how old is this conflict between the two schools of naval critics--those who rely on number and those who rely on individual strength. CHAPTER XI THE SECOND DUTCH WAR TO THE FOUR DAYS' BATTLE AUTHORITIES.--The State Papers, which are very fully copied in the Calendars for these years, are by far the best authorities for the events of the second. The official narrative of the battle of Lowestoft published by the Government, and drawn up by the Duke of York's secretary, Sir W. Coventry, is printed in the Life of Penn. A very full account of the Four Days' Battle by a French eyewitness is to be found in the _Memoirs of the Comte de Guiche_. Clarendon gives the fullest account of the transactions at Bergen. Captain Mahan's _Sea Power in History_ and Admiral Colomb's _Naval Warfare_ now become inestimable, and Pepys, it is needless to say, indispensable. Brandt's _Life of De Ruyter_, the _Life of Cornelius van Tromp_, and M. de Pontalis' _Jean de Witt_ give the Dutch side.