hear and forget. Some mysterious counter-charm has stripped his
laurels of their verdure. Even the lesser incidents of the life of
Don John are replete with the interest of romance. When appointed by
Philip II. governor of the Netherlands, in order that he might deal
with the heretics of the Christian faith as with the faithful of
Mahomet, such deadly vengeance was vowed against his person by the
Protestant party headed by Horn and the Prince of Orange, that it was
judged necessary for his highness to perform his journey in disguise.
Attired as a Moorish slave, he reached Luxembourg as the attendant of
Ottavio Gonzaga, brother of Prince Amalfi, at the very moment the
troops of the king of Spain were butchering eight thousand citizens
in his revolted city of Antwerp!--

The arrival of the new governor afforded the signal for more pacific
measures. The dispositions of Don John were humane--his manners
frank. Aware that the Belgian provinces were exhausted by ten years
of civil war, and that the pay of the Spanish troops he had to lead
against them was so miserably in arrear as to compel them to acts of
atrocious spoliation, the hero of Lepanto appears to have done his
best to stop the effusion of blood; and, notwithstanding the
counteraction of the Prince of Orange, the following spring, peace
and an amnesty were proclaimed. The treaty signed at Marche, (known
by the name of the Perpetual Edict,) promised as much tranquillity as
was compatible with the indignation of a country which had seen the
blood of its best and noblest poured forth, and the lives and
property of its citizens sacrificed without mercy or calculation.

But, though welcomed to Brussels by the acclamations of the people
and the submission of the States, Don John appears to have been fully
sensible that his head was within the jaws of the lion. The blood of