such persons should forthwith be taken.

Thus the war, which had for a brief period been suspended during the
angry, tortuous, and hopeless negotiations which succeeded the arrival
of Don John, was once more to be let loose. To this point had tended all
the policy of Orange-faithful as ever to the proverb with which he had
broken off the Breda conferences, "that war was preferable to a doubtful
peace." Even, however, as his policy had pointed to a war as the
necessary forerunner of a solid peace with Spain, so had his efforts
already advanced the cause of internal religious concord within the
provinces themselves. On the 10th of December, a new act of union was
signed at Brussels, by which those of the Roman Church and those who had
retired from that communion bound themselves to respect and to protect
each other with mutual guarantees against all enemies whatsoever.
Here was a step beyond the Ghent Pacification, and in the same direction.
The first treaty tacitly introduced toleration by suppressing the right
of persecution, but the new union placed the Reformed religion on a level
with the old. This was the result of the Prince's efforts; and, in
truth, there was no lack of eagerness among these professors of a faith
which had been so long under ban, to take advantage of his presence.
Out of dark alleys, remote thickets, subterranean conventicles, where the
dissenters had so long been trembling for their lives, the oppressed now
came forth into the light of day. They indulged openly in those forms of
worship which persecution had affected to regard with as much holy horror
as the Badahuennan or Hercynian mysteries of Celtic ages could inspire,
and they worshipped boldly the common God of Catholic and Puritan, in the
words most consonant to their tastes, without dreading the gibbet as an
inevitable result of their audacity.

In truth, the time had arrived for bringing the northern and southern,