familiar to me as those of Mendoza, Carnero, Cabrera, Herrera, Ulloa,
Bentivoglio, Peres, Strada. The manuscript relations of those Argus-eyed
Venetian envoys who surprised so many courts and cabinets in their most
unguarded moments, and daguerreotyped their character and policy for the
instruction of the crafty Republic, and whose reports remain such an
inestimable source for the secret history of the sixteenth century, have
been carefully examined--especially the narratives of the caustic and
accomplished Badovaro, of Suriano, and Michele. It is unnecessary to add
that all the publications of M. Gachard--particularly the invaluable
correspondence of Philip II. and of William the Silent, as well as the
"Archives et Correspondence" of the Orange Nassau family, edited by the
learned and distinguished Groen van Prinsterer, have been my constant
guides through the tortuous labyrinth of Spanish and Netherland politics.
The large and most interesting series of pamphlets known as "The Duncan
Collection," in the Royal Library at the Hague, has also afforded a great
variety of details by which I have endeavoured to give color and interest
to the narrative. Besides these, and many other printed works, I have
also had the advantage of perusing many manuscript histories, among which
may be particularly mentioned the works of Pontua Payen, of Renom de
France, and of Pasquier de la Barre; while the vast collection of
unpublished documents in the Royal Archives of the Hague, of Brussels,
and of Dresden, has furnished me with much new matter of great
importance. I venture to hope that many years of labour, a portion of
them in the archives of those countries whose history forms the object of
my study, will not have been entirely in vain; and that the lovers of
human progress, the believers in the capacity of nations for
self-government and self-improvement, and the admirers of disinterested
human genius and virtue, may find encouragement for their views in the
detailed history of an heroic people in its most eventful period, and in
the life and death of the great man whose name and fame are identical