descend. That human creatures can assimilate themselves so closely to
the reptile, and to the subtle devil within the reptile, when a party end
is to be gained is enough to make the very name of man a term of
reproach.

Day by day appeared pamphlets, each one more poisonous than its
predecessor. There was hardly a crime that was not laid at the door of
Barneveld and all his kindred. The man who had borne a matchlock in
early youth against the foreign tyrant in days when unsuccessful
rebellion meant martyrdom and torture; who had successfully guided the
councils of the infant commonwealth at a period when most of his accusers
were in their cradles, and when mistake was ruin to the republic; he on
whose strong arm the father of his country had leaned for support; the
man who had organized a political system out of chaos; who had laid down
the internal laws, negotiated the great indispensable alliances, directed
the complicated foreign policy, established the system of national
defence, presided over the successful financial administration of a state
struggling out of mutiny into national existence; who had rocked the
Republic in its cradle and ever borne her in his heart; who had made her
name beloved at home and honoured and dreaded abroad; who had been the
first, when the great Taciturn had at last fallen a victim to the
murderous tyrant of Spain, to place the youthful Maurice in his father's
place, and to inspire the whole country with sublime courage to persist
rather than falter in purpose after so deadly a blow; who was as truly
the founder of the Republic as William had been the author of its
independence,--was now denounced as a traitor, a pope, a tyrant, a venal
hucksterer of his country's liberties. His family name, which had long
been an ancient and knightly one, was defiled and its nobility disputed;
his father and mother, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, accused
of every imaginable and unimaginable crime, of murder, incest, robbery,