other, to make a study of that time and history with the country in
which it was enacted, and from it to deduce the necessary characters.

In the case of "Lysbeth" the author has attempted this second method. By
an example of the trials, adventures, and victories of a burgher family
of the generation of Philip II. and William the Silent, he strives to
set before readers of to-day something of the life of those who lived
through perhaps the most fearful tyranny that the western world has
known. How did they live, one wonders; how is it that they did not die
of very terror, those of them who escaped the scaffold, the famine and
the pestilence?

This and another--Why were such things suffered to be?--seem problems
worth consideration, especially by the young, who are so apt to take
everything for granted, including their own religious freedom and
personal security. How often, indeed, do any living folk give a grateful
thought to the forefathers who won for us these advantages, and many
others with them?

The writer has sometimes heard travellers in the Netherlands express
surprise that even in an age of almost universal decoration its noble
churches are suffered to remain smeared with melancholy whitewash. Could
they look backward through the centuries and behold with the mind's eye
certain scenes that have taken place within these very temples and
about their walls, they would marvel no longer. Here we are beginning
to forget the smart at the price of which we bought deliverance from
the bitter yoke of priest and king, but yonder the sword bit deeper
and smote more often. Perhaps that is why in Holland they still love
whitewash, which to them may be a symbol, a perpetual protest; and
remembering stories that have been handed down as heirlooms to this day,