influential persons was held at Brussels on the 9th of January 1577, at which a compact in support of the late resolutions at Ghent was formed, known by the name of the Union of Brussels; and a copy of the deed of union having been transmitted to Don John, the result was a conference between him and certain deputies appointed by the states. At this conference, which was held in a city of Luxemburg, a treaty was agreed upon, dated the 12th of February 1577, and known by the name of the Perpetual Edict. It secured for the inland provinces all that they had been so earnestly contending for, all that the Pacification of Ghent bound them to demand-the removal of the Spanish troops, the release of prisoners, and a mild and considerate government. The Protestant provinces of Holland and Zealand, however, were dissatisfied with it, and refused their

concurrence.

It appeared now as if the long struggle had come to an end; as if Spain and the Netherlands had finally compromised their differences. When Don John made his entry into Brussels on the 1st of May 1577, the citizens congratulated themselves on the skill with which they had managed to limit his authority, and said to each other: 'Ah, it will cost our new regent some trouble to play his game as Alva did.'

No sooner, however, had John taken the reins of government in his hands, than he began to free himself from all the restraints which the inland provinces thought they had imposed on him. Resolved to recover all the prerogatives he had parted with, he despatched letters written in cipher to Philip, urging him to send back the Spanish and Italian forces into the Netherlands; and making a journey from Brussels to the frontier province of Namur, he took possession of the capital of the province, intending to wait there till the troops should arrive. The letters were intercepted by the king of Navarre, and being immediately sent to the Prince of Orange, were by him made public. Enraged at the discovery of the regent's treachery, the authorities of the inland provinces now determined to cast him off; and at the same time they entreated the Prince of Orange to come to Brussels and assume the administration of affairs. Accordingly, leaving his own faithful maritime provinces, the prince sailed up the Scheldt, and thence made his passage by canal to Brussels, amid the cheers of the multitudes who stood lining the banks for miles, anxious to obtain a sight of 'Vader Willem' coming to do for them what he had already done for the Hollanders and Zealanders. He entered Brussels on the 23d of September, and was immediately invested with the office of governor of Brabant, a title which gave him as much power as if he had been a regent appointed by Philip himself. The whole of the Netherlands now, except the two frontier provinces of Luxemburg and Namur, where Don John still maintained his influence, were under the government of William of Orange. His darling scheme of uniting the maritime and the inland

provinces under one system of government, extending to both the blessings of perfect civil freedom, and allowing each group to establish that form of worship which was most conformable to its own wishes the maritime group the Protestant, and the inland group the Catholic form, while yet neither the Catholics should be persecuted in the one nor the Protestants in the other-this scheme was now all but realised. With respect to the question, how Philip's rights as the sovereign of the Netherlands should be dealt with, this was a point about which, in the meantime, it was unnecessary to give himself much trouble. It would be decided afterwards by the course of events.

This happy aspect of things was not of long duration. William had hardly entered on his office, when he began to be harassed by those petty insect annoyances which always buzz and flutter round greatness, making the life of a man who pursues a career of active well-doing on a large scale very far from a pleasant one to himself. At length a powerful cabal was formed against him by certain Catholic noblemen; and, without the consent of the states, or any other legitimate authority, the Archduke Mathias, brother of the emperor of Germany, was invited to come and assume the government of the southern provinces of the Netherlands. The arrival of this self-announced governor was a decided surprise to the states; but the quick eye of the Prince of Orange saw that it might be turned to advantage. By inviting Mathias to assume the office which Don John considered to be his, the Catholic nobles had given an unpardonable offence to Philip; and if Mathias did assume the government, it would set the Spanish king and the German emperor at variance; both of which events were exceedingly desirable as matters then stood. William therefore was the first to recommend his own resignation, and the appointment of Mathias as governor instead—a change which would do no harm, as Mathias was a silly young man whom it would be very easy to manage. On the 18th of January 1578, Mathias therefore was formally installed as governorgeneral, with the Prince of Orange as his lieutenant in every department; and Don John was at the same time declared a public

enemy.

Meanwhile Philip had sent a powerful army to reinstate Don John. At the head of this army was Alexander Farnese, Prince of Parma, the son of that Duchess of Parma who had been regent before Alva, and though yet young, reputed to be the first military genius of the age. Pushing into the interior of the Netherlands with this army, Don John speedily reconquered a large tract of the country; and the states, defeated in several engagements, were obliged to entreat assistance from foreign powers. After several months of war, they were delivered from all fear of having the treacherous John restored to the regency; for, on the 1st of October 1578, he died suddenly at Bougy. But if delivered of one enemy in

John, they had to contend with another in all respects more formidable in his successor, the matchless Prince of Parma. The prospect of a campaign against a man so eminent in the art of war completely disheartened them; and any chance they might have had of being able to repel the invasion which he conducted, was infinitely lessened by the outbreak of violent dissensions in the southern provinces, especially between the Flemings, or inhabitants of Flanders, and the Walloons, or inhabitants of the south-eastern provinces.

UNION OF THE SEVEN PROVINCES.

In these circumstances, the Prince of Orange thought it best to take precautions for securing the independence of at least a part of the Netherlands. It had long appeared to William that the next best thing to a union of all the provinces of the Netherlands under a free government, would be the union of the maritime provinces by themselves under such a government. These provinces would form a distinct state, thoroughly Dutch and thoroughly Protestant; and the difficulty of governing them separately would be far less than that of governing them in conjunction with the southern or Walloon provinces, whose inhabitants were not only Catholic, but half French in their lineage and their habits. The progress which the Prince of Parma was now making, not only in conquering, but in conciliating the Walloons, decided William to carry into effect his longcherished idea, and to attempt a formal separation between the northern provinces and the rest of the Netherlands. His efforts succeeded; and on the 29th of January, there was solemnly signed at Utrecht a treaty of union between the five provinces of Holland, Zealand, Guelderland, Utrecht, and Friesland, by which they formed themselves into an independent republic. Thus was a new European state founded, which, being joined afterwards by the two provinces of Overyssel and Groningen, and recognised by the foreign powers, obtained the name of The Seven United Provinces, and subsequently of Holland.

But while labouring to effect this great object, William by no means ceased to struggle for another which he considered greater still the independence of the whole Netherlands. If a community of religion, and the enthusiastic attachment of the people to his person, endeared the northern provinces to him in a peculiar manner, the breadth of his intellect, and his general love of liberty, made him take a deep interest in the fate of the southern provinces; and gladly would he devote his best exertions to secure for the Flemings and the Walloons of the south that independence which he had to all appearance secured for the Dutch of the north. Accordingly, both before and after the union of the northern provinces, he continued to act as lieutenant-governor under Mathias, and to superintend the administration of the southern provinces.

Meanwhile an attempt was made by the pope and the emperor of Germany to bring about a reconciliation between Spain and the Netherlands. But Philip's bigotry again interposed a barrier in the way of an agreement: for he declared, that whatever other concessions he might be willing to make, he never would be at peace with heresy. While these negotiations were pending, the Prince of Parma had slackened his military activity; but when the congress broke up its sittings in the end of 1579, he recommenced his campaign in the southern provinces with fresh ardour.

It was evident, however, to the Prince of Orange, that the issue of the struggle could not be decided by one or two battles with the Prince of Parma. His aim all along had been to thwart Philip by engaging some of the principal European powers on the side of the Netherlands. No sooner, therefore, had he seen the Protestant provinces of the north united by the treaty of Utrecht, than he began to mature another scheme by which he hoped to obtain for the union greater strength within itself, and greater estimation in the eyes of foreign nations. This was no other than the formal deposition of Philip from the sovereignty of the Netherlands, and the election of a new sovereign capable of bringing into the field all the power of some foreign nation to counterpoise that of Spain. He hesitated for some time whether the future sovereign of the Netherlands should be Queen Elizabeth of England, or the Duke of Anjou, brother to the French king; but at last decided in favour of the latter. Having finally weighed his scheme, and resolved to adopt it, he procured a meeting of the States-General at Antwerp; and there Philip was deposed as a tyrant;' the Netherlands were declared a free and independent state; and the Duke of Anjou, having become bound to use the power of France to expel the Spaniards from his new dominion, entered on the exercise of the sovereignty. At the same time, William of Orange was installed in the government of Holland, Zealand, and Friesland, under the title of Stadtholder, and with the reservation of the right of homage to the Duke of Anjou.

These arrangements were concluded in 1581 and 1582; and for two years after, the history of the struggle is but an uninteresting record of sieges and engagements, important at the time, but too numerous to be detailed in a narrative. We hasten to the concluding act of the drama.

ASSASSINATION OF THE PRINCE OF ORANGE. Philip, surrounded by the haughty ceremonial of a Spanish court, kept his dark and evil eye ever rolling towards the Netherlands. Foiled, defeated, gaining an advantage only to lose it again, he had watched the course of the struggle with a bitter earnestness. A scowl passed over his brow at every recollection of the manner in which his heretical subjects had resisted his authority and baffled

his purposes. But the last indignity was worst of all. To be openly deposed in the face of all Europe, to be rejected and cast off by a portion of his subjects inhabiting a little corner of his vast dominions, to have another sovereign elected in his stead-this was an insult such as monarch had never experienced before. And all this had been done by that one man, William of Orange. In the course of his life he had already been thwarted, or supposed himself to be thwarted, by one personal enemy after another; and these, if history be true, he had successively disposed of, by sending them prematurely out of the world. The poisoned cup, or the dagger of the hired assassin, had rid him of several blood-relations whom he conceived to be his enemies. His own son, his eldest born, had died by his orders; and now he resolved to rid himself by similar means of the man who had robbed him of the Netherlands. Early in 1580 he issued a proclamation offering a reward of 25,000 golden crowns, with a patent of nobility, and a pardon for all past offences, to any one who should assassinate the Prince of Orange. In reply to this brutal proclamation the prince published a defence of his own conduct, which, under the name of The Apology, has been always admired as one of the noblest refutations ever penned. It is believed to have been the composition of a Protestant clergyman, a friend of the prince.

For some time no effects followed the issuing of Philip's proclamation, and William was quietly engaged in consolidating the government under the Duke of Anjou. He had gone to Antwerp to attend the ceremony of the new sovereign's inauguration, and was to stay there some time, until everything was fairly settled. On the 18th of March 1582, he gave a great dinner at the castle of the town to celebrate the duke's birthday. Leaving the hall to ascend to his own chamber, he was met at the door by a silly melancholy-looking young man, who desired to present a petition. While he was looking at the paper, the young man fired a pistol at his head. The ball entered below the right ear, and passing through his mouth, came out at the other side. The prince fell apparently dead, and the assassin was instantly put to death by the attendants. It appeared, from papers found on his person, that he was a Spaniard named John Jaureguay, clerk to Gaspar Anastro, a Spanish merchant in the town. Anastro had engaged to Philip, for a reward of 28,000 ducats, to effect the object which the proclamation had not been able to accomplish; but, unwilling to undertake the assassination in person, he had fixed upon his melancholy halfcrazed clerk as his deputy; and the poor wretch had been persuaded by a Dominican monk of the name of Timmerman, that the death he was sure to die in the performance of so glorious an act of duty would be an immediate entrance into paradise. Timmerman, and Venero, Anastro's cashier, who was also implicated in the murder, were seized and executed; but Anastro himself escaped. It was