The war betwixt the republics had been disastrous to the Dutch, and the peace of 1654 was degrading to the States, though not proportionally disadvantageous. They consented to desert the cause of the exiled Stuarts, and to punish the authors of the massacre at Amboyna; they yielded to the English the honour of the flag in the narrow seas; they agreed to pay to the East India Company eighty-five thousand pounds, in compensation of damage done to them; and they consented to the cession of the island of Polerone in the East Indies: lastly, by a secret article, the province of Holland guaranteed an assurance, that neither the young Prince of Orange, whose connection with the exiled family rendered him an object of the Protector's suspicion, nor any of his family, should be invested with the office of Stadtholder. Note XII. _No sooner was the Frenchman's cause embraced, Than the light Monsieur the grave Don outweighed._--St. XXIII. p. 12. In 1655, Cromwell allied himself with the rising power of France against the declining monarchy of Spain; less guided, probably, by any general views of political expedience, than by the consideration, that the American and West India settlements of the latter power lay open to assault from the English fleet; while, had he embraced the other side, his own dominions were exposed to an invasion from the exiled king, with French auxiliaries. The splendid triumphs of Blake gave some ground for the poetical flourishes in the text. Note XIII. _And, as the confident of Nature, saw How she complexions did divide and brew._--St. XXV. p. 12. It was still fashionable, in the seventeenth century, to impute the distinguishing shades of human character to the influence of complexion. The doctrine is concisely summed up in the following lines, which occur in an old MS. in the British Museum: With a red man rede thy rede, With a brown man break thy bread, On a pale man draw thy knife, From a black man keep thy wife. Note XIV. _He made us freemen of the continent, Whom nature did like captives treat before; To nobler preys the English lion sent, And taught him first in Belgian walks to roar._--St. XXIX. p. 13.