That there should be some discrepancies was inevitable.
Philip II.

wrote a remarkably bad hand, and his Ambassadors were not chosen for their penmanship.

The most striking fact in the case is that Mr.Hume has derived assistance from Froude in the performance of his own duties.

"I have," he writes in his Introduction, "very carefully compared the Spanish text when doubtful with Mr.Froude's extracts and copies and with transcripts of many of the letters in the British Museum." Nothing could give a better idea than this sentence of the difficulties which Froude had to surmount, or of the fidelity with which he surmounted them.

He had not only achieved his own object: he also smoothed the path of future labourers in the same field.