The whole work [his history], of which the three volumes already
published form a part, will be called "The Eighty Years' War for
Liberty."

Epoch I. is the Rise of the Dutch Republic.

Epoch II. Independence Achieved. From the Death of William the
Silent till the Twelve Years' Truce. 1584-1609.

Epoch III. Independence Recognized. From the Twelve Years' Truce
to the Peace of Westphalia. 1609-1648.

My subject is a very vast one, for the struggle of the United
Provinces with Spain was one in which all the leading states of
Europe were more or less involved. After the death of William the
Silent, the history assumes world-wide proportions. Thus the volume
which I am just about terminating . . . is almost as much English
history as Dutch. The Earl of Leicester, very soon after the death
of Orange, was appointed governor of the provinces, and the alliance
between the two countries almost amounted to a political union. I
shall try to get the whole of the Leicester administration,
terminating with the grand drama of the Invincible Armada, into one
volume; but I doubt, my materials are so enormous. I have been
personally very hard at work, nearly two years, ransacking the
British State Paper Office, the British Museum, and the Holland
archives, and I have had two copyists constantly engaged in London,
and two others at the Hague. Besides this, I passed the whole of
last winter at Brussels, where, by special favor of the Belgian
Government, I was allowed to read what no one else has ever been
permitted to see,--the great mass of copies taken by that government