world, and for the noblest cause which can inspire humanity. Fanatics
they certainly were not, if fanaticism consists in show, without
corresponding substance. For them all was terrible reality. The Emperor
and his edicts were realities, the axe, the stake were realities, and the
heroism with which men took each other by the hand and walked into the
flames, or with which women sang a song of triumph while the grave-digger
was shovelling the earth upon their living faces, was a reality also.

Thus, the people of the Netherlands were already pervaded, throughout the
whole extent of the country, with the expanding spirit of religious
reformation. It was inevitable that sooner or later an explosion was to
arrive. They were placed between two great countries, where the new
principles had already taken root. The Lutheranism of Germany and the
Calvinism of France had each its share in producing the Netherland
revolt, but a mistake is perhaps often made in estimating the relative
proportion of these several influences. The Reformation first entered the
provinces, not through the Augsburg, but the Huguenot gate. The fiery
field-preachers from the south of France first inflamed the excitable
hearts of the kindred population of the south-western Netherlands. The
Walloons were the first to rebel against and the first to reconcile
themselves with papal Rome, exactly as their Celtic ancestors, fifteen
centuries earlier, had been foremost in the revolt against imperial Rome,
and precipitate in their submission to her overshadowing power. The
Batavians, slower to be moved but more steadfast, retained the impulse
which they received from the same source which was already agitating
their "Welsh" compatriots. There were already French preachers at
Valenciennes and Tournay, to be followed, as we shall have occasion to
see, by many others. Without undervaluing the influence of the German
Churches, and particularly of the garrison-preaching of the German
military chaplains in the Netherlands, it may be safely asserted that the