Christendom, it had been its fate so often to overstep the bounds of
reason and moderation in its devotion to freedom, so often to incur
ignominious chastisement from power which its own excesses had made more
powerful, that its name was already becoming a bye-word. It now, most
fatally and for ever, was to misunderstand its true position. The Prince
of Orange, the great architect of his country's fortunes, would have made
it the keystone of the arch which he was laboring to construct. Had he
been allowed to perfect his plan, the structure might have endured for
ages, a perpetual bulwark against, tyranny and wrong. The temporary and
slender frame by which the great artist had supported his arch while
still unfinished, was plucked away by rude and ribald hands; the keystone
plunged into the abyss, to be lost for ever, and the great work of Orange
remained a fragment from its commencement. The acts of demagogues, the
conservative disgust at licence, the jealousy of rival nobles, the
venality of military leaders, threw daily fresh stumbling-blocks in his
heroic path. It was not six months after the advent of Farnese to power,
before that bold and subtle chieftain had seized the double-edged sword
of religious dissension as firmly as he had grasped his celebrated brand
when he boarded the galley of Muatapha Bey, and the Netherlands were cut
in twain, to be re-united nevermore. The separate treaty of the Walloon
provinces was soon destined to separate the Celtic and Romanesque
elements from the Batavian and Frisian portion of a nationality, which;
thoroughly fused in all its parts, would have formed as admirable a
compound of fire and endurance as history has ever seen.

Meantime, the grass was growing and the cattle were grazing in the
streets of Ghent, where once the tramp of workmen going to and from their
labor was like the movement of a mighty army. The great majority of the
burghers were of the Reformed religion, and disposed to make effectual
resistance to the Malcontents, led by the disaffected nobles. The city,