m the

and independence he secured is no longer a Republic, and so has, in a measure, ceased to bear the stamp of his genius. The narrow limits of his theater of action; for the Belgic States were a trifling province of Philip Second's stupendous empire, stretching, as it did, from Italy to the farthest western promontory of the New World. A th

ant in size, a principality any king might esteem riches. In the era of William the Silent the Netherlands had reached an acme of relative wealth, influence, and commanding importance, and supplied birthplace and cradle to the Emperor Charles V, who, for thirty-seven years (reaching from 1519 to 1556) was the controlling force in European politics. This ruler was grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella, and thus of interest to Americans, whose thought must be riveted on any one connected, however remotely, with the discovery of this New World, which supplies a stage for the latest and greatest experiment in civilization and liberty, religion, and individual opportunity. Low as Spain has now fallen, we can not be oblivious to the fact how that, on a day, Columbus, rebuffed by every ruler and every court, found at the Spanish court a queen who listened to his dream, and helped the dreamer, because the enthusiasm and eloquence of this arch-pleader lifted this sovereign, for a moment at least,

ter Joanna and Philip had been enthroned sovereigns of Castile, Philip sickened and died with his brief months of kingship. His death totally disordered an understanding already pitifully weak. Her grief was tearless and pitiful. To quote the words of Prescott: "Her grief was silent and settled. She continued to watch the dead body with the same tenderness and attention as if it had been alive, and though at last she permitted it to be buried, she soon removed it from the tomb to her own apartment;" and she made it "her sole employment to bewail the loss and pray for the soul of her husband." Of such a weak though loyal and sorrowing mother was Charles V born at Ghent, February 24, 1500, who, at the age of sixteen, was left by the will of his godfather, Ferdinand, sole heir of his dominions; and at the age of nineteen he was chosen Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Fortune conspired to do him homage. Charles was little inclined to the study of the humanities, but fond of martial exercise, and, though neglecting general learning, studied, with avidity and success, history and the theory and practice of government, and accustomed himself to practical management of affairs in the government of the Netherlands, as early as 1515 attending the deliberations of the Privy Council. He was, as a youth, a prince of whom a realm would naturally feel proud, though he scarcely displayed those qualities which were afterward his chief characteristics. In 1516, King Ferdinand, dying, left Cardinal Ximenes regent of Castile, thus bringing Charles into contact with one of the foremost statesmen of Spanish history. Ximenes was rigorously ascetic in his life, and absolutely irreproachable in his morals, in an age when the clergy were excessively corrupt. He doubled his fasts, wore a hair shirt, slept on the bare ground, scourged himself with assiduity and ardor; became the confessor of Queen Isabella, and therefore of great political importance, inasmuch as she followed his counsel, not alone in things spiritual, but also in things temporal. Severe in his sanctity,

him; and the emperor, at his abdication, leaned on Orange, then a youth of but twenty-one. To what an extent he comprehended so humane a sentiment, Charles had been tender with the Netherlands because of his life-long relation to its people. He looked a

d legs, he stands, a picture of decrepitude, ready to give away a crown he can no longer wear. Philip, the son, is thin and fragile to look upon, diminutive in stature; in face, resembling his father in "heavy, hanging lip, vast mouth, and monstrously protruding lower jaw. His complexion was fair, his hair light and thin, his beard yellow, short, and pointed. He had the aspect of a Fleming, but the loftiness of a Spaniard. His demeanor in public was silent, almost sepulchral. He looked habitually on the ground when he conversed, was chary of speech, embarrassed, and even suffering in manner." Such is the new king as we see him; and Motley has put our observations into words for us. But if in looks there were manifest resemblances and extreme divergencies, in character they were wide apart. Charles was soldier, first and always; Philip was a man for the cabinet, having neither incli

ated all state dispatches; wrote many long epistles with his own hand, eschewing secretarial aid. He had a mind capacious for minutiae; was colossally egotistical; was as little cast down by defeat as elevated by triumph, which is in itself a quality of heroic mold, but viewed narrowly turns out to be imperturbable phlegmaticism and self-assurance, which simply underrated disasters, making himself oblivious to them as if they did not exist. He was possessor of the greatest realm ever swayed by a single scepter. He affected to be proprietor of the seas; he thought Flanders a garden to be tilled to supply his table, and its wealth, gold for him to squander on Armadas. Italian provinces were his, and Spain was his; and the Western Hemisphere, by his own daring assumption, and the generosity of the papal gift, and the toils of Ponce de Leon and de Soto and Coronado and Pizarro and Cortes, was his. Compared with the wide and bewildering extent of his kingdom, the Roman Empire was a dukedom. His empire spurred him to world-dominion, and he used his patrimony and its fabulous weal

inds few parallels in the annals of the world. He was a creature of the Church, as he conceived all in his dominions were creatures to him. Free will and the right to conviction he did not claim for himself and would not consider for others. The world was an autocracy, universal, necessary, the pope as chief tyrant and Philip under-lor

order, Philip being judge. The divine right of kings was a foregone conclusion, antagonism to which was heresy. Here let us not blame Philip; for this was the temper of his era, and to have anticipated in him larger views than those of his contemporaries is not just. To this notion was his whole nature keyed. He co

Though this question will be laughed down, as if to ask it were to stultify the asker; but not so fast, since bigotry is not all bad. To hold an opinion is considered a virtue. To hold an opinion of righteousness against all odds f

an immortal phrase: "Ye can not serve God and Mammon." The query, then, is, Where does this intolerance of truth pass into bigotry? For I think it easy to see that this passage is but a step, nor is the dividing line so easy to discover as we might wish. Ask this question, to illustrate our dilemma, "What is the difference between legitimate competition and monopoly?" An answer rises to the lip instanter, but is no sooner given than perceived to be invalid. A like closeness of relation exists between the virtue of intolerance and the vice of intolerance, a synonym of which is bigotry. Virtue is intolerant of vice, and there are great verities in the kingdom of God to be held if life must pay the price of their retention. This is the explanation of martyrs, whose office is to witness to truth by cross and sword and fagot. The Reformation stands for the right of free judgment in things appertaining to religion, thou

et waters; and this appears certain: The dominant force of those turbulent times was religious, by which I mean that religion is the key of all movements, politics being shaped by theological dogmas and purposes. These dates certify to the omnipresence of religious movement; for the Inquisition, Lepanto, the great Armada, the Edict of Nantes, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, are all ecclesiastical in intent, by which is not at all meant they were good, but were perverted religious views, in which human wickedness, ambition, and bigotry pre-empted religion, and used it as a medium of expression, and in turn were used by the thing they had fostered. No more prevalent misconception prevails than that religion is the cause of outrageous violence, disorder, and misconduct; the truth being, rather, men's passions, under guise of religion, rush their own wanton course. In this particular era of history, all movements were religious, as has been shown; and Philip thought himself the apostle of religion, chosen of God, and was used by the Roman Catholic Church, and, as a wise historian affirms, "In fanatical enthusiasm for Catholicism, he w

ism was the flower of that earlier-day Protestantism. Besides, the Walloons settled New Amsterdam; the Huguenots, the Carolinas; the Anglicans, Virginia; the Lutherans, New Sweden. From the standpoint of statesmanship, Luther was shaping peoples for a New World, and was the commanding personality of those stormy years in which, like a warrior who never knew fatigue, he fought the battles of the living God. Unquestionab

heathen than Christian, and this mongrel of Christianity and heathenism is Roman Catholicism. Root, stem, and branch, it is hostile to the Word of God, and, as every such system must do, darkened the consciences of men. We may not forget, however, its essential religious and scholastic services in earlier years, nor that it has nurtured some of the saints among the centuries. Catholicism has a basis of Christianity, and, could the excrescences be hewn away, and this foundation be again discovered, then for Roman Catholicism would dawn a new and greater era. But as the system stands, it affected temporal sovereignty, it humbled kings, and gave away empires. Pope Leo X was not a bad man, being so far superior to Alexander XII as to preclude comparison. Many popes had been so vile as to have shocked even the moral indifference of those times; but Leo X, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, heir of the traditions in companionship and the humanities which had made Florence illustrious,-Leo, cultivated, brilliant, clean in his personal life, had assembled around him men reasonably good. His aesthetic inclinations were running him deeply in debt, and to fill the bankrupt treasury, His Holiness commissioned Tetzel to sell indu

d his Spanish soldiers and followers, or that, to use his own words from the famous "Apology," "From that moment I determined in earnest to clear the Spanish venom from the land." Watch his flushed face; his eyes, like coals taken fresh from an altar of vengeance; his hand, nervously fingering his sword-hilt; his form, dilating as if for the first time he guessed he had come to manhood,-and I miss in rec

his sovereign; wearing his religion, if he may be said to have possessed any, as lightly as a lady's favor; lacking in reverence, he was flippant rather than irreligious, but a youth of fashion, pleasure, and luxury. Charles V, discovering in him extraordinary parts, invested him, at the age of twenty-two, with command of the imperial forces before Marienburg, and at his abdication leaned affectionately on William's shoulder. Count Egmont alone excepted, Orange was the most distinguished Flemish nobleman who passed from Charles to Philip as part of the emperor's bequest. Early in Philip's reign, Orange was made one of the king's counselors and Knight

eat which became settled hatred, and never lifted from his heart for a moment in those long succeeding years, when the king, like a recluse in the Escurial, brooded over his defeat. His troops forced from Flemish territories, Philip himself departed from a region he had never loved and had scarcely tolerated, departed, not to return any more, save by proxy of fire and sword, and cruel soldiery, and more cruel generals-

have been told you regarding this hero of the sixteenth century. In Prescott's "Philip the Second" may be found an incomplete characterization of the prince, without the unfavorable attitude toward Philip or the laudatory view of William presented in Motley. These two American historians have approached their theme with such ampleness of scholastic research and elaborate access to and use of the correspondence of Margaret, Parma, Alva, Granvelle, Don John of Austria, William, and Philip, as practically to exhaust the sources of information on this tragic reign, at the same time shutting off much of possibility from the future historian. William has at last, in Motley, found a biographer for whom any illustrious character might be t

depicted as hypocrite and plotter against his rightful sovereign. I find no marks of this on him. That he had ambition is not to be argued; but ambition is no sin if worthily directed. He did things not consonant with our ethics, belonging, in that sense, to his age, an age of diplomatic duplicity. He did not tell all he knew. He had in his pay the king's private secretary, and received a copy of any letter the king wrote; and when at last the secretary's treason was discovered, he paid the penalty of his perfidy by being torn in pieces by four horses; yet bribery of employees was common then, and was a practice of every potentate, and was what Philip did in every court in Christendom. Absolute fealty was all but unknown. Each man was believed to have his price, and the belief, in most instances, was not erroneous. Besides, William was in a state of perpetual war with Philip, and war makes its own code, and justifies the otherwise unjustifiable, and but for this subtle surveillance of the king's intention, no stand could have been made against his treachery and encroachments; for he was the sum of duplicities, deceiving everybody, those nearest to him and most intimately in his counsels no less than his foes. Duplicity was native to him as respiration. Granvelle, who in treacherous diplomacy was not inferior to Macchiavelli, him Philip deceived. Such a king, William met by finesse and deception against finesse and deception. To judge a statesman of the sixteenth century by the ethics of the nineteenth century is studied injustice. He is accused of evasion in

of virtue in her. William was lonely, and writes his brother Louis to come to him, if only for a fortnight. So far as surfaces may indicate, his relations with Philip were at this period placid, and himself loyal, only he is alert always to avert any encroachment of tyranny. Philip, undeterred by all his fair words and promises, supported by royal honor, spoken to Count Egmont, who had been sent to the Escurial to make formal protest in behalf of the nobles against religious persecution, not so much as a question of tolerance as a question of wisdom, seeing all the nobles were sincere Catholics, and the further impossibility of enforcing such an edict,-Philip, in the face of these advices and in the face of his promises, sent, in 1565, peremptory orders to Margaret of Parma, Regent of the Netherlands, to proceed against heretics. So Philip's duplicity was revealed and the die cast. One thing was fortunate: the worst was known. Protests poured in, a veritable flood-protests against all Inquisitorial methods in a land accustomed to liberty-the prince, meantime, remaining moderate, to the exasperation of the Protestants, whose blood boiled at the prospect of an Inquisition in their midst and for their extermination. From Breda, William watched evils take shape, his very calm giving him advantage in forming accurate judgment of the magnitude of opposition on which he might rely, concurring in a remonstrance drawn up

h, 1567, came Philip's order commanding every Flemish functionary (each of whom had taken oath at the beginning of his reign) to take a new oath, demanding "every man in his service, without any exception whatever, should now renew his oath of fealty," said oath reading, "Demanding a declaration from every person in office as to his intention to carry out His Majesty's will, without limitation or restriction," which William, refusing to take, offered his resignation to the regent; and the breach was made. On April 10, 1567, Orange wrote Philip his intention of withdrawing from the Royal Council, and on the day following, leaving his

prince, loyal to and trusted by Charles V, has come to be a rebel against the Church and Philip II, with a price put upon his head. His remaining life is one

head and almost mortally wounded. Under such circumstances, even a brave man might have seen a pitfall at every step, a dagger in every hand, and poison in every cup. On the contrary, he was ever cheerful, and hardly took more precaution than usual." Surely these are not marks of cowardice. Compare William with Henry IV of France, and Count Egmont, hero of St. Quentin's. They were soldiers, never statesmen. Henry was goaded by impulse. He, on the now classic field of Ivry, calling his soldiers to follow where his white plume leads, is a hero-soldier figure; and Egmont, generous, impulsive, magnetic, chivalrous, devoid of forecast, had, at St. Quentin's, administered such defeat as "France had not experienced since the battle of Agincourt." He was a brilliant soldier, and burnt like lightnings before men's eyes. Both these commanders were dramatic, and compelled victory, so as to merit the rank of soldiers forever. William the Silent falls not in such company. His campaigns were not brilliant, though many generals who are accounted great are devoid of this quality. He was not the soldier his son Maurice was, who was properly ranked as a brilliant soldier, and in quality of action takes his place beside Henry IV and Count Egmont. His soldiership, however, monopolized his genius, using all its fire. Fortunate it was for the Netherl

ommunities; in short, did in Spain what, in a later period, Julius Caesar did in Gaul. William the Silent for years carried on his warfare in Philip's name, tacitly assuming that Philip's agents were at fault, and not Philip's self, and that himself was the king's true representative in the Low Countries. William made war in the king's name, Granvelle, in the earlier stages of the rebellion, being named as the agent of oppression; while, in fact, t

onable service in keeping him from losing heart. Almost every leader proved false to him, some of his own relations included, and he kept on! He must use the men he had. A great cause requires and equips a great leader. It was so in William. His country and its cause had him, and in him was rich. He saw worth in men, and built on that. That men betrayed him did not unseat his faith in men. He did what every statesman does, had faith in men, appealed to their possibilities, to their prospective rather than their present selves, and so helped them to what they ought to be. He lifted them up to his levels, and they stood peers in manhood and patriotism. Many failed him; but many did not. Much discouraged, but, specially later in his career, much encouraged him. Deeds of heroism so incredible as to read like a romance,-such deeds were not rare, rather common. The siege of Maestrich takes rank among the heroic episodes in the battles for human liberty. One's blood grows fairly frantic in reading the thrilling story, and a man is glad he is a man and brother to men who could do feats so superb; and the flooding of the lands in raising the siege of Leyden is to be classed among the deathless sacrifices for dear liberty. For these and all such lofty flights of courage and success, William was the inspiration. He was never defeated by defeat. Liberty must not fail. The Provinces trusted him in their hearts, and so long as he remained firm, self-sacrificing, undisturbed, the people (so he argued) could be relied on to trust in him and to justify his trust in them. In behalf of freedom, no sacrifice or achievement was other than feasible to him. He loaded his estate with debt for the common good. Through many years penury was his portion. Great events marshaled themselves about him as if he were their necessary captain. He knew the art of inspiring men, which is, at last, the mightiest resource of a great soul. He knew how to deal with men,-the fin

pire, keeping at the respective courts secret agents, with lavish gold for corrupting those sovereigns' servants. His reign is a sort of free fight with him on everybody, he keeping every item under his own surveillance, but displaying no capacity to do other that baldly claim and attempt. He could not compass his designs. There were no compensations in his reign. He lost and never gained. England defeated him at home and abroad. The Dutch defied him, and won their liberty after bitter years of struggle. His every effort to subdue them failed. Though the Inquisition murdered from fifty to one hundred thousand of his most industrious su

f magnificent proportions. At his death, fifteen out of the seventeen provinces were in rebellion; and had he lived, there can be no rational doubt the remaining two had rebelle

ange. While his refusal of regal honors reflected credit on his manhood and disinterested patriotism, that refusal was a weakness to the cause of liberty. About a king men of those days would have rallied as about no Stadtholder; for the Flemings were never essentially republican in instincts. Freemen they learned to be; republicans they never learned to be. Had William of Orange

people!" and this, save his whispered "Yes" to his sister's eager inquiry if he trusted his soul to Jesus, were his last words, so that, as his country had been his thought through many turbule

rotestants, though never wholesale persecutors, had yet to learn this wise man's lesson. And this must rank among the underscored virtues of this old soldier of liberty, that he wished men to worship God without molestation. Nor did this tolerance grow out of indifference to religion. In youth he was careless of Divine matters, and thought little of religion. But so sagacious and so burdened a man as he grew to feel need of strength beyond the help of man. In his mature years he was from conviction a Christian in the Protestant C