World's Wonder and Other Essays (2024)

Roy Glashan's Library
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MARJORIE BOWEN
[MRS. GABRIELLE MARGARET VERE (CAMPBELL) LONG]

First UK edition: Hutchinson & Co., London, 1938
First US edition (reprint): Books for Libraries Press, Freeport, NY, 1969

This illustrated e-book edition: Roy Glashan's Library, 2023
Version Date: 2023-09-25

Produced by Colin Choat and Roy Glashan

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"...his accomplishments, like his character, were beyond
the comprehension, if not the wonder, of his times."
—Marjorie Bowen

TABLE OF CONTENTS

[* Some very short pieces of fiction are inserted in the"Three Dutch Provinces"; they were inspired by Dutch paintings andrepresent the author's reactions to Dutch history and art.
—Marjorie Bowen]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PREFACE

THE following studies have been written during several years,between longer works. They have nothing in common beyond thewriter's own tastes and inclinations.

Each subject was chosen because it aroused a considerableinterest in the writer. Two of the essays were contributed tocollections of such studies by various authors, two were given aspapers before the Royal Society of Literature, one at LeedsUniversity. "The Dutch Provinces" was written after a visit to theNetherlands made some time ago. This has been revised and freedfrom clerical errors but not brought "up-to-date," so it is not tobe taken in any way as a present-day guide to the LowCountries.

This and the other studies have already pleased some readers,and it is hoped that they may now prove of some interest toothers.

Some of the essays are efforts in the art of compression; theauthor was allotted so many pages and into this frame had to fit aportrait or a period.

Others were limited because they had to run to no more pagesthan would suit a subject paper; others again have been expanded tothe limit of the author's interest and capacity.

This explanation is given because it may seem strange to thereader that no more space is devoted to such a vast subject as"Mary Stewart, Queen of Scotland," than to a forgotten poet likeEdward Young or a forgotten writer like Thomas Reynal.

No bibliographies or references have been given as it was feltthat these would weigh down a work not intended for the student butfor the general reader.

It would also have been a laborious undertaking to have giveneven a brief list of authorities consulted, places visited, andworks of art studied, when materials were being collected for theseessays.

A careful revision of the text has been made since these studieswere first printed, but doubtless the reader's indulgence will haveto be asked for some errors of fact or judgment.

The writer's constant preoccupation with the past has led herinto many by-paths of history, art, and literature, and she hasfound the obscure and the odd personalities as attractive as thefamous figures that do, however, prove, perhaps unfortunately,difficult to resist.

Some of the subjects chosen in this collection are so well knownthat it is impossible to think of an excuse for doing them again;others are so little known that they afford, perhaps, but smallmatter for interest.

It is possible, however, that there may be those who will find afresh treatment of the well known, and a bringing forward of thelittle known, not without some merits, if only that of revivingmemories of some of the most celebrated characters in history andthat of attracting attention to some subjects that are oftenoverlooked, but that do reveal odd glimpses into the by-paths ofhistory.

Some very short pieces of fiction are inserted in the "ThreeDutch Provinces"; they were inspired by Dutch paintings andrepresent the author's reactions to Dutch history and art.

Marjorie Bowen.
Richmond,
Surrey.
1937.

1. WORLD'S WONDER—FREDERIC II OF HOHENSTAUFEN

IN March, 1212, Frederic of Sicily sailed up the Tiber with asmall retinue; landing at Rome, he paid homage to the Pope,Innocent III, in the sumptuous palace of the Lateran.

This visitor to the city of the Caesars had come to claim theheritage of the Caesars; he was on his way north to assumesovereignty over that chaotic Empire which papal gratitude hadbestowed on Carolus Magnus; revived by Otto the Great, it had beencarried to a height of splendid pretension by the House ofHohenstaufen, of which this Sicilian prince, the son of the EmperorHenry VI and grandson of the redoubtable Frederic I, calledBarbarossa, was the heir.

His mother was Costanzia, heiress of the rich and elegantkingdoms of Sicily and Naples, and this Frederic had been born onChristmas Day, 1194, at Iesi, in Apulia, while his father wascelebrating the advent of the Prince of Peace by the atrociousmassacre of the family and followers of the rebel Tancred; beforeFrederic was three years old this grim tyrant had died and hiswidow had put the defenceless boy under the guardianship of thePope, who took the occasion to seal a hard bargain with her, whichincluded the vassalage of her paternal lands and a yearly tributeto the throne of St. Peter.

Even the dearly-bought protection of the Holy Father could not,however, secure the Empire to the grandson of Barbarossa, thoughthe Electors of Germany had sworn to Henry VI to elect his son ashis successor, and since the time of Otto the Great it had beenunderstood that the imperial crown was to go to the prince chosenby his peers to be king of Germany.

Not only had Frederic been ignored in the competition for thissplendid crown, which had been bestowed on his uncle, Philip ofHohenstaufen, by the majority of the Electors and on Otto of Guelf,Duke of Brunswick, by the minority, but a confusion of civil warhad been stirred up in his native kingdom, so that the boy, leftmotherless at four years of age, was often not only without arealm, but without a home. The protection of the Pope had preservedhim from complete ruin and had secured him an education; Sicily wassubdued to some quietude and the young King married to Costanzia,widow of the King of Hungary, and sister of the King of Aragon.

Meanwhile, for twelve years a struggle of hideous ferocity hadraged between Philip of Hohenstaufen and the Guelf, ending in thesuccess of Otto, who was rewarded with the imperial diadem; butimmediately afterwards the newly-elected Kaiser broke the oaths ofsubmission he had made to the Pope and proceeded to harry the landsof the papal ward, this Frederic Hohenstaufen, King of Sicily andrightful Caesar, now in Rome.

Innocent at once excommunicated the refractory Emperor andfomented divisions in Germany, where the defeated Hohenstaufenparty was still powerful though subdued.

Otto hastened north from his Italian conquests to crush thisrebellion, and Innocent, as a counter-move, encouraged the youngFrederic to come from Palermo and assume the dignity of hisforefathers, in answer to the summons of the Electors who, weary ofthe civil war, turned to the young Hohenstaufen for relief.

Such were the events that brought the grandson of Barbarossa tothe footstool of Innocent III in the early spring of 1212.

The high adventure to which Frederic had been summoned wasperilous and lofty, full of profound dangers, but with the greatestprize in the world as a possible reward; he was reputed to be of asoft and voluptuous temperament, given to elegant versifying andidle pursuits in his warm southern kingdom where the traditions ofan ancient culture were decaying amid flowery fields, where yellowmarble temples dedicated to dead gods still stood amid the wildvines, and where the dark groves of bay and olive, ilex and citron,shadowed the meads that Theocritus had peopled with singingshepherds.

Innocent, the shrewd, powerful man of the world, who grasped thekeys of St. Peter with as ferocious a grip as the terribleHildebrand himself, had been doubtful if this Sicilian born andbred Hohenstaufen would be of any use to him in his struggle withOtto of Brunswick; it was difficult for the Pope to find a princestrong enough to hold together the unwieldy Empire of CarolusMagnus, and at the same time meek enough to be the humble vassal ofRome.

Frederic Hohenstaufen was now seventeen years old, and had beenthree years married; when the papal forces had driven the Saracensinto the mountains in 1200, and restored some measure of peace toSicily, the Pope had installed the Archbishop of Taranto as tutorto the King (then six years of age); this dignitary was assisted,oddly enough, by infidel scholars and the boy's mind had beenformed by Mohammedan as well as Christian doctrines; he wasunusually accomplished in the liberal arts, but he had disclosed noambition, and apart from a piteous appeal to the sovereigns ofEurope, written when he was in great misery, at the age of eleven,had made no attempt to interfere in the embroiled confusions of thetime.

This King of Sicily had embarked on his ambitious journey withonly a scanty following; most of the Sicilian nobles had preferredthe delights of their native country to an enterprise so dubiousand had not wished to see Sicily become an appanage of the Empire,and when he appeared before the Pope it was with a mere retinue,not an army, and a retinue clad in silk and adorned with Easternopulence.

Innocent hoped to put forward this brilliant boy as hislieutenant in Christendom, a position in which the Popes had beenstriving to put the Emperors since they bestowed the pompoushonours of the Caesars on the Frankish monarch who had steadied St.Peter's tottering throne.

It had often seemed since then as if there was to be no peace inChristendom until either Pope or Emperor was crushed, or until bothwere united in common aims, welded into one vast authority, whichshould subdue the world under the banner of the cross, protected bythe consolidated armies of Europe obedient to one supreme head, theEmperor, who would be, in his turn, obedient to the Holy See.

Such was the ambition of the present successor of St. Peter, norwas it an unmeaning or pretentious one for the Church that had keptalive culture and learning, trade and art, during five centuries inthe East while Europe crashed in the West.

Europe was still in a state of confusion and required reducingto order and colonising; learning and wisdom were mostly themonopoly of the Church; it was therefore natural that the Popesshould become obsessed with the importance and splendour of theirtask, sanctified as it was by the magnificent divine command, "See,I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, toroot out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, tobuild, and to plant," and that they should passionately desire inthe greatest secular power, the Empire, which they had themselvescreated, not an insolent rival, but a submissive ally.

Innocent III thought that he had found such an ally in the youthhe had protected and educated, who now knelt humbly before the grimold man, reverently renewed the oaths of vassalage made by hismother, and admitted the baseless claim that Innocent had advancedfor the over-lordship of Sicily and Naples.

The Pope for his part provided the imperial pretender with menand money and gave his dangerous enterprise the sanction of theChurch.

The slim and serene youth then advanced northwards where adeputy from the Electors had already been sent to warn the greatLombard towns of the coming of the rightful heir of the Caesars,the king of Germany, of Sicily, the duke of Suabia and Emperorelect.

The bearer of these proud titles had a difficult journey beforehim; the country was infested with his enemies, and Otto ofBrunswick, though deposed by the Electors and excommunicated by thePope, was still powerful and counted many of the princes of Germanyamong his friends, nor was he likely to relinquish his gorgeousprize without a renewal of the struggle to which fourteen years ofmost bloody warfare had habituated him.

The summons of the Diet had come from Nuremberg in the previousOctober, and Frederic's objective was the heart of Germany; betweenhim and that lay the Italian and German States, many of whom wereeither Guelf in sympathy or at war with one another.

Frederic did not hesitate before these rampant perils; he pushedforward to his goal with a daring that was as heartening to hisfriends as it was menacing to his enemies.

His character was not yet completely disclosed; it was knownthat he was intelligent and accomplished, and it had been just seenthat he was as ambitious and daring as befitted his descent, easilythe most illustrious in the West.

His present undertaking was quite in accordance with the spiritof a restless, tumultuous age, and the glory of his name seemedlikely to be linked to the glory of his achievements.

The blend of the German and the Sicilian had produced inFrederic one who was not typical of either race; the boy who wasgalloping across Italy to his imperial throne was slight, almosteffeminate in appearance, with a profusion of reddish blond hair,small features, a pale complexion, and light eyes of a singularbrightness and clarity; his face had been compared to the calmcountenance of the broken statues of Apollo that here and therelingered in ruined shrines in Sicily; but, if his features hadsomething of classic beauty and cold composure, his appointmentswere Eastern in luxury and profusion; he paraded sumptuously in theembroideries, the jewelled arms, the gleaming silks and finevelvet, the erect plumes and the gold-studded leathers of theEast.

Pisa, which sided with the Guelf, barred the young adventurer'sway, but Pisa's enemy, Genoa, received him; he remained in thisopulent and stately city for two months, while his adherentsendeavoured to secure for him some way into Germany other than theobvious route through Milan and the Alps, for the mighty Lombardcity was unflinchingly loyal to the Guelf.

Frederic made at last for Pavia, where he was warmly acclaimed,slipped secretly by night to Cremona through a hostile region,gained Mantua, Verona, and from there the Bavarian frontier, havingescaped, by the narrowest margin, death or capture at the hands ofhis swarming enemies.

His following was reduced now to a meagre train and the greatestperils were in front of him; Otto barred the way across Bavaria,but the Emperor elect showed that judicious blend of caution anddaring, that power to judge swiftly and prudently, to act bravelyand warily, which stamp the great leader of men; the luxurious andelegant prince, used only to the soft pleasures of Sicily, turnedto the West and proceeded through the snow-bound passes of theAlps, smilingly endured the hardships of the progress through thealmost impassable defiles, and came out, still elegant andcomposed, in his own Duchy of Suabia, where he was joined by somenotable churchmen, the Bishop of Coire, and the Abbot of St.Gall.

The splendid city of Constance, towering above her vivid, vastlake, now became the pivot of the contest; the Guelf threatenedthis gateway to Frederic's progress northwards, hoping to occupythe town and from this base to drive the daring boy back intoItaly.

But Frederic was always surpassingly swift, he dashed onConstance, reached the walls while Otto was a few miles away, andimperiously demanded the loyalty and support of the Bishop ofConstance, an ancient adherent of the House of Suabia.

He was admitted into the city, the gates were closed in the faceof Otto, who fell back northwards disheartened, and theHohenstaufen had won the Holy Roman Empire.

Frederic marched triumphantly to Basle, nearly all the Germanpotentates hastened to share his success, his train swelling tomajestic proportions as he advanced, brilliant, smiling, serene,into the heart of his new kingdom.

He now disclosed his latent genius; preserving the sereneequanimity of a lofty mind, he remained as unmoved by the dazzlingconclusion of his adventure as he had been by its dubiousbeginning, and proceeded to consolidate his position by lavishrewards to his German friends and by an alliance with France, whoseenemy, the crafty Angevin, John of England, favoured the cause ofOtto, his nephew.

Philip Augustus celebrated this treaty with a munificent gift ofmoney, which Frederic, with prudent generosity, proceeded to divideamong the Electors and princes of Germany.

At Mainz he held a Diet, at Frankfort he was crowned by thehands of the Papal Legate in the presence of all the Teutonicpotentates and five thousand loyal knights.

This was in December, 1212; it was less than a year sinceFrederic had left Sicily, almost unattended, and now he hadachieved the summit of all possible worldly human ambition; he wasthe Emperor, the heir of the Caesars and of Carolus Magnus, thechief of the Holy Roman Empire, which the men who had elected himbelieved had been "set up by God Almighty, that its Lord, like Godon Earth, might rule Kings and Nations and maintain Peace andJustice."

He was not yet quite eighteen years old and he had been set up"like a God on Earth," the temporal chief of Christendom.

He ruled directly over the entire area of Germany, Austria, theNetherlands, nearly all Belgium, and the kingdom of Arles (Franceto the Rhone) and Northern Italy, and theoretically he was "thelord of the whole world"; Sicily and Southern Italy were histhrough his mother, and Poland and Hungary were tributary to him;no youth had ever before wielded, or was ever again to wield, sovast and real a power; his empire exceeded that of Alexander ofMacedonia, and almost equalled that of Rome at the apogee of itsglory.

The next few years were a glittering, triumphal progress forFrederic Hohenstaufen; he swept through Germany with hisresplendent following of kings, bishops, nobles, routed out thesupporters of Otto, who fled into his ancestral territories ofBrunswick, and rewarded his vassals with the same smiling calm withwhich he crushed the partisans of the Guelf; his fame becameunprecedented, unbounded.

John of England, allied with the Earl of Flanders, rashly tookup the cause of Otto, his sister's son, but was utterly defeated byPhilip Augustus at the battle of Bouvines, a defeat that causedEngland to lose Normandy; and after this final overthrow of theGuelf, Aix-la-Chapelle surrendered to Frederic, who, seated on thethrone of Carolus Magnus, was sumptuously crowned for the secondtime.

He had already taken a vow of obedience to the Pope andrecompensed him for his assistance by gifts of land in CentralItaly and the surrender of various rights to the Church in Sicily,as well as by the cession of some disputed estates in Tuscany. Henow, with the silver crown of Germany on his head, the Cross in hishand, and anointed with the holy oil, made a further concession tothe known desires of the Papacy.

He swore to lead a crusade to the Holy Land, and with hisbeauty, his power, his obvious sincerity he moved the packedmultitudes, who had just thrice shouted assent to his stupendouselevation, to excited enthusiasm.

Frederic was now in a position almost beyond the limits of humanambition and almost beyond human capacity to maintain; he, who hadbeen an obscure, petty king, whose childhood had been passed inpoverty and confusion, neglect and peril, found himself elevated tosupreme power over all his fellows, and this at twenty years ofa*ge.

It was, of course, a height as dangerous as it was magnificentto which he had climbed; despite the prestige of his birth and thesolid advantage of papal support, a single weakness in himselfmight have at once hurled him to ruin. He had to be bold and wary,daring and prudent, at once loved and feared, to hold together,even for a moment, his huge and divided empire; nor was he, atfirst sight, the type of man to rule successfully warlike andimpetuous peoples; the fair and slender youth, trained in southernluxury, had nothing of the powerful presence, the fierce andoverwhelming masculinity that had made his forefathers the naturallords of warriors.

His appearance, his manners, and his tastes might well haveseemed effeminate to the rough and burly Germans who crowded roundthe eagles, but Frederic was easily and without dispute theirsuperior; by reason of his intellect and character he was a bornmaster of men, and with this native genius for governance werecombined a personal charm, an attraction, a fascination of word andlook, too seldom seen with genius, too often the attributes of theshallow and the worthless.

Frederic's Sicilian blood had tempered the grand virilequalities of the Hohenstaufen with a silken grace, an exquisitetact, a delicate courtesy that even the sullen or the ill-affectedcould not resist; added to these was the serenity of consciousgreatness; Frederic never met his equal in worldly rank, nor hisequal in intellectual attainments, he was by genius, as well asposition, the foremost man of his time.

This air of calm power, this smiling, but indifferentamiability, this equable, finished elegance of manner, togetherwith his accomplishments and his learning, masking an indomitablewill, combined to give him a power as tremendous as that enjoyed bythe greatest of his ancestors, and a wider fame.

He was exceedingly popular with every rank of the Germans, whosaw in him the Emperor who would restore to them that orderedprosperity which they had enjoyed for a short while under theearlier Hohenstaufen, and which had lately been lost in thedisputes between the factions of the Guelf and Ghibelline.

Frederic increased this popularity by a lavish and impartialgenerosity, Oriental in munificence, and further bound the Germansto his service by an open-handed distribution of grants,privileges, and dignities, which in truth cost him but little,since these petty potentates had long since seized the chanceafforded them by the perpetual disturbances in the Empire ofgrasping at a certain amount of liberty for themselves.

A lesser man would now have proceeded to enjoy his triumph, socomplete and so unexpected, in pleasure and ease; this might havenaturally been Frederic's choice, for he had spent two toilsomeyears since he had left the delights of Sicily and he was by naturevoluptuous and indolent; to one of his wide, alert mentality muchof the active world about him must have appeared contemptible orridiculous, and reading, meditation, the exercise of his gifts formusic and poetry, the indulgence of his delight in beauty andgrace, in refined and elegant diversions, made a strong appealindeed.

But Frederic Hohenstaufen looked beyond his personalgratification; he saw the world spread before him, struggling intosome semblance of law and order, system forming out of chaos, peacetrembling on the heels of war, and he believed that he might makethese things permanent, that, out of the confusion and darknessthat had eclipsed Europe since the disruption of the Roman Empire,he might create an empire as mighty and united as that of theCaesars, but more secure, since it would include the power of thosepeoples, the barbarians, who had overthrown the ancient power, andthe influence of that new God who had overthrown the ancientgods.

No one could have conceived a more lofty ambition, or seen thetask to his hand on a wider scale, and no one could have devotedhimself to his work with greater single-mindedness, with moreprofound wisdom.

Such men as Frederic are always accused of personal ambition;this charge is but the croaking of the frogs in the marsh thatfollows the flight of the bird across the sky, the spitefuljealousy of the little souls that remain in the mud because theyhave no wings to fly with.

It is not possible for a man of supreme intellect in a positionof supreme power to feel the cringing humility of the mediocre mindhaving but little authority, or to doubt and depreciate himself asif he were a dreaming philosopher or a cloistered monk; such a manas Frederic Hohenstaufen faced even his God on equal terms, and ifhe saw the world like a jewel of silver and lapis lazuli hung athis belt for his adornment, he saw it in no spirit of pettyarrogance, but with an ironic appreciation of his own supremacy ina crude, violent, ignorant age.

With deliberate abnegation of his own desires, he flashedthrough the dark forests, the heavy towns, the wide meadows ofGermany, with his train of troubadours and dancers and scholars andglittering knights, a sparkling pageant under these cold skies,among this uncivilised, turbulent people, whose laws, customs, andpossessions were alike in one rude confusion.

The fair, smiling Emperor held his Diet in city after city,travelled from castle to castle, received submission aftersubmission from towns and feudal barons, administered swiftjustice, granted charters for the revival of trade and agriculture,threw the protection of his power over the weak, and hurled thewrath of his power against the oppressor; he was a despot whosewill might never be questioned, but the reviving prosperity of thecountry, the gratitude of those he had protected and those he hadenriched, the deep impression made by his personal charm andbeauty, and the bright splendour of his mind, caused universaladmiration and applause, not only throughout the Empire, butthroughout the world.

Encouraged by these awestruck praises, Frederic proceeded toconfirm the House of Hohenstaufen in imperial power; he sent forhis wife and little son, Henry, from Sicily, and, at the Diet ofFrankfort in 1220, used all his influence to persuade the Electorsto choose the latter, already duke of Suabia and ruler of Burgundy,as the future king of Germany.

Frederic, by thus associating his son with himself in thegovernment and by securing for him the succession to the Empire,had achieved a personal triumph and openly flouted the Pope, whosemain object was to prevent the aggrandisem*nt of the Emperor andthe Hohenstaufen.

This glittering success cost Frederic but little, so great werehis prestige and popularity; he certainly gave his obedient princescharters, which were the first sanction of the disruption of theEmpire, but these, like his former concessions, were but aconfirmation of privileges long enjoyed, which it would have beendangerous, if not impossible, to rescind.

Frederic, besides this affront to the papal authority, hadfurther irritated Rome by his reluctance to fulfil the oath takenat his coronation in Aix-la-Chapelle; and this would have doubtlessled to an open breach with Rome, had not the fiery Innocent IIIdied and been succeeded by a mild spirit, Honorius HI, whose feebleprotests were received by Frederic with courteous indifference, andspecious excuses not untinged with irony.

The Emperor, having restored order and roused loyalty inGermany, soothed the Pope and secured the reversion of hisdignities to his son, turned his attention to his Italianpossessions, and in August, 1220, crossed the Alps again anddescended into Lombardy at the head of a sumptuous cavalcade ofTeutonic knights; such gorgeous and massive potentates as the Dukeof Bavaria, the Margrave of Hohenburg, the Count Palatine, and theArchbishops of Mainz and Ravenna added to the imposing display ofpomp and power that glorified Frederic Hohenstaufen, now, attwenty-six years of age, the foremost man in the world, andenjoying a popularity that was probably beyond that ever accordedto any other prince and that he had won by his own personalqualities, his justice, his affability, his prudence, his livelygrace and dazzling accomplishments, his tolerant patronage of alltypes of intelligence and effort, his wide view of all questions ofthe moment.

While he had been consolidating his power in Germany, the greattowns of North Italy had fallen into strife, the Guelfs revengingthemselves on the Church that had protected the Ghibellines byseizing her property and expelling her prelates; Frederic glancedaside from this bewildering confusion and proceeded to Rome, wherehe was splendidly crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in thegorgeous basilica of St. Peter with all the pomp with which theChurch dignified her most important ceremonies.

The blond and elegant Emperor, simply arrayed in spotless whiteamid a company resplendent with every device of worldly pageantry,received from the Holy Father the beautiful insignia of hisstupendous office, the Cross, the Lance, the Sceptre, the GoldenApple, all symbols of various aspects of the power with which thevicar of Christ invested his lieutenant.

Frederic did not receive these supreme honours without having tomake some return for them; he paid homage to the Pope, he held hisstirrup while he mounted for the procession through the city wherethe Emperor rode behind the Pontiff, he abased himself to kiss thejewelled slipper of Honorius, and, most important of all, he tookthe Cross from the hands of Cardinal Ugolino and repeated his vowof six years ago to lead a crusade against the infidel—adding onthis occasion the promise to sail the following August.

Goodwill was now complete between the two heads of Christendom,and Frederic, by no means dazzled with the glitter of thegem-encrusted imperial diadem now added to his treasure chests,proceeded to engage in several weeks of laborious business; heissued many edicts to various cities, made many appointments, andsent out many manifestos to various provinces of his scatteredrealms; many of these were certainly concessions to papal authorityand measures of precautions against his enemies, the Guelfs, butwith them were associated schemes of betterment for the generalpopulace, protection for farmers, travellers, and traders, andprovisions against the robber and the rogue.

There is no reason whatever to doubt the sincerity of theEmperor in these decrees, or to suspect that they were merely theprice of preferment received; it was natural for him to associateChristianity with law, order, and progress, and to regard the papalauthority as the main support and hope of the future peace andenlightenment he had himself so much at heart, and the stern lawshe promulgated against heretics must have seemed to himnecessary curbs on the rebellious and the lawless. But a cloud wassoon to arise between Emperor and Pope.

Frederic proceeded to his beloved Sicily and found confusionthere, as was likely in a kingdom left too long without a king; inrestoring his authority and punishing the refractory he showed asterner haughtiness than he had as yet disclosed, and among thosewhom he deprived of ill-gotten honours or dubiously gained estateswere several priests and churches.

The immediate remonstrance of Honorius was received impatientlyby Frederic, who declared, without a trace of the submission thathe had shown in Rome, "that I would rather lay down my Crown thanlessen my authority." He repudiated the compact between hishelpless mother and the unscrupulous Innocent III and proceeded toexercise the ancient privileges of the Sicilian kings.

With sharp justice and cold and implacable severity he put downhis rebellious subjects, then led a force against the Saracensstill lodged in the western mountains of the island, signallydefeated them, hanged their leader, and transported twenty thousandof their finest fighting men to Apulia, where he ejected theChristians from Lucera and established the Moslems in their place,allowing them to use the cathedral as a mosque: these Saracens wereto serve as a colony of warriors for the defence of the Empire.

This action revealed to the papal power the manner of man it hadto deal with; for this superb piece of bold statesmanship wherebyrebels were turned into loyal soldiers (of the finest type offighting men) was conceived and executed with a haughty defiance ofChurch, tradition, and public opinion, hitherto unknown.

The character of Frederic had developed since his firstcoronation; his expanding genius was no longer to be curbed byconvention, nor hampered by the fears, doubts, and restrictionsthat control small minds; in the growing maturity of his powers hebecame intolerant of all restraints, impatient of any superiorauthority, he revealed that he was fierce, bold, cruel, and superbas a beast of prey beneath his smiling amiability, his graciouscharm, his ready tact, and as self-assured and indomitable as onemust be who looks abroad and sees no equal. No other prince, sincethe Church had been established in Europe, had flung such anaffront in her face as Frederic had now done in setting up thisSaracen colony, established at the expense of Christians.

A superstitious age was profoundly shocked, and even the mildHonorius was moved to an indignant protest.

Frederic replied with that ironic contempt for an opponent whichis generally described as duplicity; he said that, Moslems being ofno account in comparison with Christians, it was better that theyshould be employed in the dangerous occupation of war.

Honorius must have detected the fallacy of this answer and thearrogance that prompted it, he must have realised the immense powerthis Moslem army, not amenable to the usual threat ofexcommunication, gave to the Emperor, and the menace to papalprestige that such an action and such an excuse concealed; but hegave way, out of the weariness of old age and the timidity of agentle nature, and renewed his plaintive efforts to induce theEmperor to undertake the crusade to which he had twice pledgedhimself with all solemnity.

The crusades were, in every way, to the advantage of the Popes;not only were they excellent demonstrations of the might, loyalty,and religious zeal of the Christian princes, not only did theyprovoke outbursts of hysterical enthusiasm for the Church, but theyexhausted those resources which might have been turned against thePapacy, and involved the kings and warriors of Europe in warfarewith the infidel and with one another, which allowed them noleisure to question papal supremacy, or to resist papalencroachments.

But Frederic had no mind to weaken himself in this way, he hadno animus against the Saracens, and no vivid enthusiasm forChristianity; he visualised an empire united under a rule oftolerance where all sects, races, and creeds might work togetherfor a common splendour of progress.

No doubt his first oath was sincere, if the second was forced,but it was the oath of a boy of twenty given at a moment ofunparalleled success, and, as Frederic developed, the crusades musthave appeared to him fantastic and boyish adventures unfitted for aman of genius. He did not love fighting and hardship as warriorslike Richard Coeur de Lion had loved them, exploits of personalbravery had no attraction for him, though he was absolutelyfearless; he was too subtle, too fine for crude and aimlessexploits.

Like Robert the Bruce after Bannockburn, he looked abroad on hisown realms and saw that much needed doing there before any fancifulexpeditions in the East could be undertaken; but, unlike theScottish king, he relinquished the fulfilment of his oath withoutany passionate regret or any deep remorse.

He, however, sent an almost constant supply of soldiers to theEast, and sumptuously entertained in his profane Sicilian Court allwarriors of the Cross and pious pilgrims journeying to and fromJerusalem.

In the year 1222 he ordered a fleet of forty galleys to go tothe support of the Christians under King John of Jerusalem, who hadjust made the notable capture of Damietta.

Unfortunately for the Emperor, his galleys arrived only in timeto see the city retaken by the infidel and to learn that thetriumphant Sultan had imposed a truce of eight years upon KingJohn, softening this by a gracious present of a portion of the trueCross.

The whole of Europe was darkened by the shadow of thishumiliation, and the gentle Honorius was inspired to threatenFrederic with excommunication if he did not undertake in person thetask of reviving the prestige of Christendom.

Frederic was, however, little moved, he continued to occupyhimself with his own affairs and, at two meetings with the Pope, atVeroli and Fiorentino, he induced the aged Pontiff to agree tofurther delays.

On these occasions Frederic met John, crusader King ofJerusalem, and betrothed himself to this old warrior's daughterYolande, the Spanish Empress having died the previous year; Yolandewas heiress to the crown of Jerusalem, so Frederic had now apersonal interest in the prospect of undertaking a crusade.

This, however, seemed no nearer than before; not only Frederic,but Europe, listened coldly to the papal expostulations andexhortations; neither England nor France nor Italy nor Germanycould be roused to the old reckless excitement, and CardinalUgolino, who had handed the Cross to Frederic when he took hissecond oath, endeavoured in vain to rouse Lombardy toenthusiasm.

The Pope was not to be easily thwarted in a matter so nearlytouching his own interests, and he pestered Frederic until theEmperor agreed to sail in August, 1227, and to maintain a thousandknights in Palestine for two years; the Pope asked, this time, fora guarantee for the fulfilment of this oath, and Frederic agreed topay, in instalments, 100,000 ounces of gold to the King andPatriarch of Jerusalem; not only was he to forfeit this if hefailed to go to the East, but he was also to be instantlyexcommunicated.

It is probable that Frederic would not have agreed to these hardterms had he not now been married to Yolande, heiress of Jerusalem;this caused him to look on the crusades from another angle, that ofhis own glory.

While the Pope thought he had bound the Emperor to his service,the Emperor was resolving to use this expedition to gain yetanother kingdom for himself and perhaps indulging the daring dreamof adding the Empire of the East to the Empire of the West.

His first move in this direction was to deprive hisfather-in-law of his kingly rank, which the doughty crusader onlyheld in virtue of his marriage with the Queen of Jerusalem, andwhich legally reverted to Frederic; John de Brienne was furious atthis treatment but was unable to resist, and the Emperor now addedto his mighty honours that mystical, unsubstantial title, King ofJerusalem.

Frederic, having now quieted both his German and his Italianpossessions, disposed of the internal menace of the Saracens inSicily, reduced the pretensions of the Church in his nativecountry, and, with bold, pitiless hands, crushed his enemies andrestored a fair measure of prosperity and tranquillity to theseportions of his scattered dominions, decided seriously to preparefor an expedition to the East.

He went north, at Cremona summoned a Diet and called on theItalian chivalry to meet him with the object of preparing for thelong-discussed crusade.

At the same time he summoned the boy Henry, his son, who wasmaintaining the imperial authority beyond the Alps, to bring Germanknights to assist in the holy expedition.

Lombardy was, however, entirely Guelf in sympathy and replied tothe Hohenstaufen commands with insults and menaces; Milan revivedthe Lombard League, which had been first formed against Barbarossa,Verona barred the way to King Henry so that he was forced to returnto Germany, and all the great cities, Piacenza, Verona, Brescia,Faenza, Mantua, combined to ruin the purpose of the Diet of Cremonaand to force Frederic, who was unaccompanied by an army, to retiresouth.

The ban of the Empire and the ban of the Pope alike were hurledat rebellious Lombardy, but with poor results; the utmost threatscould only induce the haughty and powerful cities to assist theGhibelline Emperor with four hundred knights.

In the March of the year (1227) that Frederic was pledged tostart for the East, Honorius III died, and the fierce andenthusiastic Cardinal Ugolino was elected in his place under thename of Gregory IX.

The struggle between Pope and Emperor, which had been sointermittent and courteous between Frederic and Honorius, now beganin good earnest between Frederic and Gregory.

The tolerant Emperor had always admired the vast erudition, therigid asceticism, the brilliant eloquence of Cardinal Ugolino, butCardinal Ugolino had always detested the worldly, voluptuous, andliberal Emperor, and his first act of papal authority showed theoutburst of a long-restrained spite against Frederic.

As he could say nothing about the crusade for which Frederic waspreparing with all speed, the grim old man of eighty, soured byrigid monastic discipline, and without any of the softer humanpassions or the more lovable human failings, administered a sharprebuke concerning the private life of the young, splendid, andvirile Emperor.

Frederic received this reprimand about his "earthly lusts" withan indifference that appeared submission, his ironic smile gave themeasure of his appreciation of the gloomy and ferocious oldascetic, and he continued his preparations for the long-deferredcrusade, which Gregory was already viewing with a hostile eye.

This crusade was disastrous from the first, none of the monarchsof Europe offered any assistance whatever, and even Frederic'simmediate vassals were reluctant; the Duke of Austria refused hissupport, and the Landgrave of Thuringia had to be heavily bribed;in truth, the expedition was unpopular with everyone save thepriests.

By August, however, the Germans were embarking at Brindisi forAcre in a heat so violent that the armour was melted on theknights' backs and brows; the Northerners, unused to such a torridclimate, succumbed by hundreds to fatigue and fever in the southernport.

When Frederic arrived at Brindisi, he was himself ill; hisdelicate but vigorous body, his superb health had given way underunexampled strain and vexation; the journey under the blazingskies, over the dry roads of an Italian summer, the continualvexations, irritations, and disappointments of his enterprise, hadbrought him to the verge of collapse; his doctors advised him toabandon the expedition till the autumn.

But Frederic decided to persist in his resolution, not from anydesire to placate the new Pope, but because he was not easily to beturned aside from anything he had undertaken.

The Christian hosts were ravaged by sickness, several of theleaders were too stricken to leave Brindisi, but Frederic sailed.After a few days at sea he became so seriously ill that his galleywas forced to return to Italy; the forty thousand Christians whohad already reached Acre returned when they heard that the Emperorwas not coming, and the long-promised crusade came to a disastrousconclusion.

Frederic, slowly recovering from his nervous fever at Naples,sent formal explanations of his failure to the Pope; but Gregory,against reason, prudence, and justice, at once excommunicated theEmperor, with all the terrors of book, candle, and bell, and withall the zest of one who seizes a coveted opportunity of injuring anenemy.

Gregory's ferocious action, followed as it was by a furiousdiatribe against Frederic, full of bitter invective andmisrepresentation, addressed to the clergy, made an immediate anddeadly breach between Empire and Papacy and brought into theconflict between these two powers the hideous elements of personalhatred and jealousy.

If it must be admitted that the pretensions of the earlier Popeshad much justification in the services the Church had rendered tocivilisation, then struggling from tribal to national status, inbeing a central authority and a powerful control, it cannot beconceded that Gregory in treating a man like Frederic as an enemy,and in endeavouring to crush a prince so splendid, so popular, andso enlightened, showed the least spark of statesmanship orforesightedness, of prudence or caution; his actions appear,indeed, to have been inspired by a jealous spite, a pettycensoriousness, and by that half-crazed arrogance too oftencharacteristic of the occupants of the Chair of St. Peter, whichseems to show that the claim of divine authority is too apt to turnthe brain of a mortal man.

Frederic was probably expecting the eternal curses of the Popeand received them with his ironic and indifferent smile; he orderedthe clergy in his dominions to ignore the excommunication (acommand they obeyed) and answered the manifesto of the Pope byanother, which he dispatched to all the monarchs of Europe.

In the letter he sent to the feeble son of the dastard John,Henry III of England, he made a dauntless and superb attack on thepower of Rome, which showed him to be as bold as he was clearsighted.

"Such is the way of Rome; under words as smooth as oil and honeylies the rapacious blood-sucker; the Church of Rome is like aleech...the whole world pays tribute to the avarice of Rome...theprimitive Church, founded on poverty and simplicity, brought forthnumberless Saints; she rested on no foundation but that laid downby Our Lord Jesus Christ; Rome is now rolling in Wealth...Rememberthat when your neighbour's wall is on fire, your own property is atstake."

Frederic followed this vigorous appeal to the rulers of Europeby prompt action against Gregory. He summoned the most powerfulfamilies of Rome to his Court, bought their estates from them attheir own price, and returned them as fiefs; he was already sopopular in his enemy's stronghold that the people broke into St.Peter's when Gregory was celebrating Mass, and showed themselvessuch warm Ghibellines that the Pope was compelled to flee toPerugia.

From this retreat the terrible old man hurled furtherfulminations at the Emperor, forbidding him to undertake thecrusade while under the curse of the Church, but Frederic continuedhis preparations and sailed from Otranto on June 29th, 1228, with atrain of only a hundred knights, for his treasury was nearly emptyand the crusade as unpopular as ever in Europe.

In the spring of that year his girl Empress, Yolande, died,leaving a son, Conrad, and Frederic considered himself heir to hercrown of Jerusalem.

In September he arrived in Acre, leaving the world amazed at thecourage with which he ignored the excommunication, affronted theChristian Church, and denied the infallibility of the Pope.

A large and motley force of Christians was assembled at Acre towelcome him, the Templars and Hospitallers, the Teutonic Order,founded by his grandfather, Barbarossa, and a fair number ofLombards, Germans, French, and English.

Gregory, blinded by furious spite against the common good, senttwo Minorite friars into the Emperor's camp with the threat ofexcommunication of all those who dared to follow the eagles; thissplit Frederic's forces in half, the Templars, Hospitallers, andmany others refusing to follow one cursed by the Church; his tactand popularity, however, brought these round to a reluctantsubmission, and the Teutonic Knights, under the famous Hermann vonSalza, remained unwaveringly loyal.

Frederic marched to Jaffa with this disunited force, and theredisplayed his genius by one of those actions with which hecontinually amazed, shocked, and awed Europe. He had long been onfriendly terms with a leader of the Saracens, Sultan Kamel, andfrom Acre had sent him lavish offerings, a compliment returned bythe gift of a camel and an elephant; emissaries went to and fromthe camps of these two philosophical princes, exchangingmathematical problems and philosophical disquisitions; to thefurther scandal of the outraged fanatics who murmured in his train,Frederic received from Kamel a bevy of Eastern dancing girls whoamused his brief leisure with their soft voices and languorousposes.

Feeling ran so high against Frederic that the Templars actuallyapprised the Sultan of a solitary expedition the Emperor proposedto take to bathe in the waters of the Jordan, with the suggestionthat this would be an excellent opportunity for the assassinationof the excommunicated crusader.

The Sultan, however, sent the traitors' letters to Frederic, whoat the same time had intercepted one from the Pope to Kamel, urgingthe latter to have no dealings with the Emperor.

Thus hampered, weakened, affronted, and threatened on everyside, not able to count on the loyalty of any but his TeutonicKnights, and at the end of his money, Frederic was obliged to lowerthe first demands he had made on behalf of Christendom and toaccept the best terms he could wring from an opponent fullyconscious of his difficulties.

That these terms were not entirely unsatisfactory was a hightribute to the genius of the harassed Emperor; by the nine articlesof the Ten Years' Truce he signed, February, 1229, he obtained morethan any crusader had obtained since 1099, when Jerusalem was firstcaptured; the Holy City was now returned to Christendom, and mostof the articles were concessions from the Sultan to theEmperor.

This bloodless success of the sixth crusade was entirely owingto the genius of Frederic; single-handed and in face of mostexasperating difficulties he had won, by sheer force of characterand intellect, more solid advantages for Christians than theflamboyant exploits of generations of previous kings had been ableto accomplish.

It is obvious that had he been supported by the Pope his successwould have been overwhelming; such as it was, it remained anamazing proof of his high qualities of statesmanship and the charmof his subtle personality, which had a peculiar fascination for theOriental mind; for the first time the Moslem met a cultured andtolerant Christian and also for the last, for though Louis IX was acourteous saint he was also a fanatic.

This treaty, so greatly to the advantage of the SyrianChristians, was received by the Papacy with a howl of fury, andGerold, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Papal Legate, wasinstructed to thwart and oppose Frederic in every way possible,while a papal army marched into Apulia under Frederic'sfather-in-law, John de Brienne, and the banner of the Keys wasraised as a rallying point for all the malcontents of theEmpire.

Frederic heard this news without surprise, nor did it send himhot haste home; he probably saw that a Christian kingdom in Syriawas a chimerical vision, and that the days of the crusades wereover, as indeed they proved to be, for, despite the impetuous pietyof Louis IX, these wasteful invasions of the East dragged on onlyfor another half-century.

But Frederic wished to be crowned in Jerusalem, his own kingdom,and hither he repaired, the fanatic Gerold at his heels, repeatingthe ban on every available occasion and finally laying the HolyCity itself under an interdict during the accursed Emperor'spresence there.

The superb Frederic, however, crowned himself with his own handsin the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, surrounded by his loyalTeutonic Knights, and during his short stay in Jerusalem showedhimself not only tolerant but favourable to the Saracens; heforbade a Christian priest to enter the mosque of Omar, he orderedthe muezzin, silenced out of deference to him, to proclaimthe hours again, and when he saw the gratings over the windows ofthe Holy Chapel, he remarked, with his serene irony:

"Ye may keep out the birds, but how shall ye keep out theswine?"

He proceeded, immediately after his last coronation, to Acre,where his conduct gave further cause for scandal to the faithfulPapists; while he was amusing himself with Eastern culture andEastern luxuries, he kept the odious Gerold prisoner in his ownhouse, filled the churches with German archers, and caused rabidfriars, who had insulted him, to be flogged.

Then, denouncing the mean and short-sighted treachery of Geroldand the Templars, the Emperor, still preserving his disdainfulpatience, dismissed the crusaders and sailed from Acre, followed bythe curses of the priests whose Faith he had come to uphold andwhose Founder's tomb he had restored to Christian care.

With the arrival of Frederic in Brindisi in June, 1230, therebellion seething in his kingdoms collapsed, town after town fellto his victorious onslaughts, and by the end of the next month, thedisappointed Pope, who had but few sympathisers in his own countryand none in the rest of Europe, was compelled to sue for peace.

A treaty was signed at San Germano, a meeting took place atAgnani, the excommunicated crusader was, perforce, received intothe reluctant bosom of the chastised Church, and the bitter oldPope retired to brood over his supreme humiliation, while thevictorious. Emperor took up the task for which he was so eminentlyfitted, the peaceful governance of a great nation.

Frederic, in his thirty-fifth year, four times crowned, was atthe climax of his magnificence, the triumphant ruler over widerdominions than any other man was ever to unite under the standardagain until the age of arbitrary rulers was long past; he governedin reality that vast realm which the later Emperors, those shadowyHabsburg Caesars, only nominally governed in pretence, and was intruth the Emperor of the West, a dignity claimed for centuries tocome, but, never effectively enforced nor successfullymaintained.

Never again was the throne of Carolus Magnus to be occupied byanyone who filled it with such spacious dignity, never again wasthe confused heritage of the Caesars to be held together by a manof such superb genius and such grandeur of character.

Frederic remains not an Emperor, but the Emperor, the onlyprince of a long succession of princes that was able even slightlyto justify the supreme arrogance of the claim of universaldominion.

The gloomy landscapes, dark cities, sombre skies and rudeinhabitants of the North, Frederic had never loved, and he now heldhis gorgeous Court in Sicily or Apulia among the soft scenes and inthe delicious climate in which he had passed his youth.

While he remodelled the tangled confusion of the legal system ofSouthern Italy with the insight and vigour of a Justinian, foundedthe University of Naples, put down the heretic and the evil-doerwith cold severity, encouraged learning, the arts and commerce withprodigal generosity, permitted a wide tolerance to the professionof all creeds, Frederic's genius found personal expression in thecultivation of science, poetry, and architecture, in the formationof a society sparkling with a brighter lustre and culture thanEurope was ever to see again till the Renaissance, in the activedelights of the chase and hawking, in the voluptuous delights offeasts and entertainments with his poets, his dancers, his acrobatsand magicians.

There was no subject open to human knowledge or occurring tohuman curiosity that the mighty mind of the Emperor did not invade;no other living man could compete with him in learning; hisaccomplishments, like his character, were beyond the comprehension,if not the wonder, of his times.

In philosophy, mathematics, languages, medicine, and naturalscience, Frederic could confound the learned men even of thelearned East, he was a soft and fluent poet, a speaker and writerof forcible eloquence, a great builder both of dark forts and ofairy villas.

Exquisite palaces of marble and alabaster, mosaic and sculpture,rose above the flowers and groves of Sicily and Apulia, grimmercastles were erected in the disloyal North; Frederic's influencebegan to change the whole aspect of the age, to bring about arevival of law and order, of learning and the arts, of trade andprosperity, of ease and luxury, hitherto unguessed at by hiscontemporaries.

As he was "Lord of the Earth," so his Court was one of themarvels of the Earth and became the nucleus of progress and theseat of all achievements of intellect and all allurements of beautyand grace. With his astrologers he peered into the other worlds,with his troubadours, conjurers, and wits he relished this world,with scholars he discussed the past, and with magicians the future;galloping over the delicious plains of Apulia with his blindfoldedhunting cheetahs riding beside him or with his bright glitteringemperor's hawk, the golden eagle, on his delicate wrist, from onehunting lodge to another (palaces of delicate pleasure, all ofthem), seated on his pearl-strewn throne in the imperial purple,receiving embassies or guests with noble courtesy, wanderingthrough his exotic menagerie, where Eastern slaves tended animalsmonstrous and fantastic to the Western eye, the figure of Fredericwas ever surrounded with a blaze of admiration even greater thanhis material glories.

His mighty power now seemed secure, and the Sicilian Caesar, inthe prime of life, with two sons to succeed him, might withconfidence believe that he had reared an empire as permanent as itwas magnificent that would continue to increase in prosperity andenlightenment under the Hohenstaufen dynasty.

His spacious statesmanship had laid secure foundations for sucha future; and his measures were prudent, wise, far-seeing; he madeonly one mistake; he under-estimated the influence and the hatredof that old, old man in Rome; he believed that he had broken themonstrous tyranny of the Popes, which had become not the rule ofChrist, but the rule of Lucifer; his own lofty and liberal mindfailed to gauge how strong was the hold of crude and stupidsuperstitions on the rude peoples of the moment; surrounded by allthat was enlightened and tolerant, imbibing the placid philosophiesof the East, with a wide knowledge of the various creeds that hadin turn dominated mankind, Frederic, in the free soft airs ofApulia, in all the brilliant freedom of his Court, could notestimate the evil power, possessed by the Pope he had subdued butnot conciliated, or the black menace that lay in Gregory's broodingsilence.

From his point of view the Pontiff had cause enough for a senseof bitter outrage; not only had the Emperor's new code summarilydisposed of many clerical privileges and pretensions, not only hadtheology been replaced by the liberal sciences in the curriculum ofthe University of Naples, but Frederic's whole existence was anexample of what was, in Gregory's eyes, paganism or atheism.

Frederic was, in fact, using all his genius, his charm, hisimmense popularity and influence, in the support of free thoughtand the intellectual investigation of those manifold problems thatthe Church had regarded as her own exclusive province or banned asblack magic; Gregory was not wrong, as later ages were to show, infearing that such a liberal mind as that of the great Emperor wasfatal to the pretensions of the Papacy.

Nor did Frederic disguise his attitude; not only did he bestowhis favours impartially on those of all creeds, but he openly madeironic comments on the dogmas of the Christian Church.

Passing through a field of ripening corn he asked, with hissatirical smile:

"How many gods will be made of that? How long will that mummerylast?"

And he had been heard to argue that if the founders ofreligions, such as Jesus and Mahomet, were not impostors, theirfollowers made them appear so; these tales and worse were broughtto Gregory.

The Emperor's dearest friend and most trusted counsellor, Pietroda Vinea, was of like mind, and those others whose advice hesometimes sought, and to whose debates he earnestly listened, wereof that wisdom which is shackled by no formulae or creeds.

Frederic had built model farms, planted corn and vines on wasteplaces, sent merchant ships to Egypt and Syria, instructed hispeople in peaceful arts, shown them an example of culture andelegance, protected and encouraged them on the long road from chaosto prosperity—but what was all this in the eyes of Gregory IX?

Frederic had founded no churches, raised no monasteries, pouredno wealth into the lap of Mother Church, there was no bigotedpriest among his counsellors, he paid but a light ironiclip-service to the Christianity of which he was the secularhead.

Nor was his private life modelled on the Christian ideal; on thescore of licentiousness the Church could have had but little tosay, since this was the favourite vice of her own clergy, and ifGregory was himself an ascetic, this was due more to a frozennature, a gloomy disposition and extreme old age, than to any rigidstandard of morals among the priesthood, and had Frederic been adutiful son of the Church, he might, like many a Christian monarchbefore and after him, have indulged unreproved, nay even approved,in any illicit or scandalous intrigue that pleased him; but hismorals received some of the wrath aroused by his atheism.

Frederic was not vicious; he was far too fastidious, toocultured, too intellectual to find any attraction in coarseindulgences of the senses; though a sumptuous provider of feastshimself, he was sparing in his food and most temperate in hisdrink, nor did his festivals and banquets ever degenerate intoorgies and displays of mere licence and profligacy; had such beenthe case he could not have retained his immense hold on the mindsof men, or his own vast intellectual supremacy.

He kept a harem at Lucera, his Saracen city, guarded by blackeunuchs, where dwelt jealously secluded Eastern and Westernbeauties, and since the death of his second Empress, he hadinstalled in her place a Milanese lady, Bianca da Lancia, who,strictly enclosed in Oriental privacy and grandeur, might beregarded as his Sultana; there was neither vice nor immorality inthis; Frederic was merely following a different and, it may beadded, a more elegant custom than that employed by other Westernpotentates whose crude amours were often coarse enough.

Nor was there any mischief in, or arising out of, this Orientalsystem about which there was neither hypocrisy nor concealment.Frederic never interfered with the wives and daughters ormistresses of his subjects (such a common cause of disorder andtragedy in mediaeval Europe), nor did he bring his name into theodium and disgrace of any scandalous or devastating passion; hepreserved always the strength and dignity of a man never influencedby women, though he set the example of an exceeding courtesytowards them, and many of his laws were in their favour.

For the rest it may be doubted whether feminine seductionsoccupied more of Frederic's attention than that of any other prince-of southern temperament. Eastern training and unlimitedopportunity for self-indulgence, and the exaggerated tales of hisextreme licentiousness, which have been so dwelt on, really provenothing but the distorted spite of his enemies.

Frederic saw no reason why he should follow the Christian ideal,which Christians themselves found far too difficult to achieve,and, in choosing the customs of the East, could hardly suppose hewas affronting the purity of a Church whose corruptions were somanifest and whose licence was so universal.

Frederic must have heard the denunciations by the clergy of hischarming odalisques with more than his usual amused irony; the manwho had abolished serfdom and been the first monarch to summon thethird estate to his councils must have laughed indeed at the fierceimportance given to his private relaxations, which were adornedwith all that was lovely and delicate.

It is said that St. Francis of Assisi visited the languorousSicilian Court of Frederic; a strange meeting this, between the manwho was the literal follower of Jesus of Nazareth and the man whoopposed the monstrous worldly power usurped in that gentlename.

They must have gazed at each other with a deep curiosity, thedirty, sickly, ragged monk, the perfumed, exquisite, and voluptuousEmperor, made delightful with every worldly device, charming withevery grace of mind and body.

It is interesting to wonder if the omnipotent prince saw in hiswretched guest that mystic and holy light which was to make thename of Francis of Assisi reverenced by multitudes when that ofFrederic Hohenstaufen would be forgotten save by the learned.

It is certain that he listened with courtesy to the sweetdoctrines of the mendicant monk, which were as far in advance ofthe times as his own wide tolerance, and which were not sodifferent from those he was familiar with from the withered lips ofEastern anchorites.

Renunciation, abnegation, poverty and self-sacrifice, thesevirtues were impossible to the rich character, the active powerfulmind of the Emperor, but he could respect their pale glory; thereis little doubt but that the cult of St. Francis would haveflourished unchecked in the Empire this tolerant king hoped tofound. When he watched the miserable monk, whose haggard face wastransfigured by divine tenderness, cross his alabaster halls anddescend his gilded steps, pass his scarlet-clad Ethiopians anddisappear under the plumy trees of his delicious gardens, Fredericmust have felt as another ruler felt when faced with another suchfigure—"What is truth?"

The first hint of the dark doom that was to overwhelm for everthe brilliant promise of the Hohenstaufen empire came from withinFrederic's own family; his son Henry, installed as regent ofGermany, joined the Lombard League in a rebellion against theimperial authority, which the Emperor had little difficulty incrushing; the feeble, ungrateful and profligate Henry, oncepardoned in vain, was at last shut up a prisoner in one of theApulian castles.

When this disorder was effectually suppressed, Frederic, then inGermany, married, for the third time, Isabella, sister of Henry IIIof England; the beautiful Angevin princess delighted the fine tasteof Frederic; she was much beneath him, England being, technically,a mere fief of the Empire.

Frederic followed the gorgeous ceremonial of his marriage with aresplendent Diet at Mainz, where even the son of the Guelf emperor,Otto of Brunswick, a cousin of the Empress, swore submission to theHohenstaufen.

This Diet was the most impressive manifestation of his gloryFrederic had yet made; never again was any emperor to appear insuch a dazzle of pomp, with such a blazing reputation, as theacknowledged head of so many nations.

This glittering display of armed might and far-reaching poweralso contained the germ of that struggle which was to bring all thegrandeur of the Hohenstaufen to the bloodstained dust.

Frederic resolved to chastise the miscreant and disloyal Duke ofAustria and to punish the sullen disaffection of the great citiesof Northern Italy.

At first the punitive expedition that Frederic led against theGuelf had a flashing success, which further increased his almostincredible fame and power; the great battle of Cortenuova was acarnage of his enemies; he rode like a Caesar indeed—into Cremona,followed by his monstrous elephant dragging the carroccio,the cherished symbol of Milan, on which the captured podestawas bound like a slave.

At Lodi he gathered together vassals and allies from all cornersof the earth; there were reinforcements from Sultan Kamel, fromVataces, Emperor of the East, from France, Spain, and Henry ofEngland, whose sister the Empress was now the mother of Frederic'sthird son, the second Henry.

All the coffers of the world seemed open to pour their treasuresat the feet of Frederic, all the men-at-arms of East and West wereeager to do homage to the lord of the world and to serve under theconquering eagles, there was no limit to Frederic's glory andmight. Nor any limit to his revenge.

Milan sued for peace in vain, uselessly made the mosthumiliating concessions; Frederic was not to be deprived of hisvengeance against this ancient gadfly of his House; he had shownhimself clement and just in peace, but in war terrible with thecold, ferocious cruelty of the Hohenstaufen; Eccelin da Romano, aman spoken of, even in those fierce days, as an incarnation of theDevil, was his trusted lieutenant, and he never checked theatrocities of his Saracen soldiers nor restrained the savagery ofhis Eastern allies.

Horror and darkness reigned in Lombardy, in Milan Cathedral thederided crucifix was hung upside down by a people driven to anoutburst of despair.

The coming of the terrific Emperor with his hideous negroes, hisgrotesque beasts, his Eastern magi, his troops of jewel-hungwantons, his escorts of blood-drenched warriors, had been like theopening of Hell's mouth belching forth demons on the lovely plainsof Lombardy.

The figure of Frederic Hohenstaufen himself, implacable,charming, superb, with his amazing learning, his Oriental customs,his ruthless cruelty, his swift movements from town to town, hisnotorious atheism, seemed to the excited minds of the despairingrebels that of Lucifer, the fallen angel, more potent for evil thanGod was for good.

And many saw in the elegant knight clad in the light armour,with the imposing imperial crown encircling the peaco*ck-plumedhelmet that rested on the reddish hair, in the shaven face with thesmall nose and full lips, in the pale bright ironic eyes, thedreadful personification of Antichrist.

Five desperate cities still held out against the imperial wrath;Frederic had made the first definite mistake of his career, drivinga defeated foe to despair; Lombardy, having nothing to hope fromher own concessions or the clemency of the Hohenstaufen, proceededto defend herself with the fury of desperation that is so oftensuccessful.

Frederic and all his dreadful panoply of war was unable to takeBrescia; after a two months' bloody struggle he was obliged toraise the siege.

A conqueror's first check is dangerous to his fame; Lombardy sawthat the Emperor was not invincible and redoubled her frantic andferocious resistance; and while the Guelfs were rallying in thisbrief breathing space, Frederic made another error, even more fatalthan his injudicious vengeance against the Lombards.

He married his natural son, the beautiful Enzio of the long goldlocks, to Adelasia, widow of the king of Sardinia, and haughtilyclaimed the island, then a papal fief, as lost territory of theEmpire.

This was a definite challenge to the Pope, one that Gregory wasquick to seize and that Frederic would have been wise not to make.The long-contained, bitter hate of the old man in Rome had at lastfound occasion to break forth in hissing rage.

There was something gigantic and grand in the wrath with whichthe aged Pontiff, then nearly a hundred years old, met thearrogance of the loathed prince, and once again hurled anathemaagainst his mighty rival for universal power.

On Palm Sunday, 1239, Frederic Hohenstaufen was againexcommunicated with all the dramatic ritual of the outragedChurch.

The Emperor, holding sumptuous Court at Pavia, received the newswith sardonic indifference; Europe was distracted by the variouscartels and manifestos issued first by the Pope and then by theEmperor, in which each stated his case with glowing eloquence andselection's from the lurid denunciations of the Apocalypse;Frederic's main accusation against Gregory was that of avarice;that of Gregory against Frederic, of atheism.

In this warfare of polemics Frederic might have been consideredthe victor; the princes of Europe were not to be against him. LouisIX declared himself his partisan, and England, when furthersqueezed to provide funds for the papal coffers, declared roundly:"the greedy avarice of Rome has exhausted the English Church ";Germany was whole-heartedly for Frederic, the Archbishop ofSalzburg plainly named Gregory Antichrist and it seemed as if thefulminations of the Pope would recoil on himself.

Doubtless at the moment Frederic fancied that he would be ableto achieve the mighty purpose unfolded in his final proclamation tohis princes:

"I am no enemy of the Priesthood; I honour the humblest priestas a father, if he will keep out of secular affairs. The Pope criesout that I would root out Christianity with force and by the sword.Folly!—as if the Kingdom of God could be rooted out by force andthe sword; it is by evil lusts, by avarice and rapacity, that it isweakened, polluted, corrupted...I will give back to the sheep theirshepherd, to the people their bishop, to the world its spiritualfather, I will tear the mask from the face of this wolfish tyrant,and force him to lay aside worldly affairs and earthly pomp andtread in the Holy footsteps of Christ."

The mighty old Pope was an adversary worthy of Frederic; hedeclared a holy war against the Emperor and gave the Guelf factionin Lombardy the immense stimulus of his support; the enemies of theHohenstaufen were permitted to consider themselves crusaders and towear the cross on their arms; Papal Legates everywhere animated therebels, and Frederic's next campaign against Milan proved abortive;he could not take the great city, which shortly before had offeredin vain to burn her banners at his feet.

His son Enzio, had, however, made a victorious progress in theMarch, and Frederic, turning towards the papal dominions, enteredthe open gates of city after city which pulled down the standard ofthe Keys to raise that of the eagles.

In the very streets of crowded Rome the volatile people shoutedfor Frederic the conqueror, and the Pope was in danger of beingsacrificed on his own altars.

But the indomitable old man saved himself and his cause by anaction of flamboyant courage; unarmed, in full glitter of holyvestments, surrounded by the sweet faces of little acolytes and theshrunken visages of ancient priests, Gregory IX tottered forth fromthe Lateran and proceeded on foot through the narrow streets ofRome close-packed with a hostile populace yelling for FredericHohenstaufen, the bright and mighty Caesar, the smiling and superbconqueror.

Before him were borne aloft the most sacred relics of the HolyCity, the heads of St. Peter and St. Paul and a fragment of thetrue Cross.

The feeble old man staked everything on this magnificent gestureand won.

Rome, in a revulsion of feeling, was soon cringing at his feet,and Frederic lost all chance of a welcome in the Holy City.

A desultory warfare, confused and bitter, marked by treachery,cruelty and rapine on either side, now dragged on; Frederic showeda noble clemency to the heroic little garrisons of Faenza andBenevento, which stands out among the atrocious episodes of thisghastly' struggle as worthy of record: Frederic was not oftenmerciful.

In the midst of this unnatural war between the two heads ofChristendom, Europe shuddered to hear that one and a half millionsof ferocious Tartars were hurling themselves into Hungary, sweepingthe Magyars before them; Gregory did not hesitate to accuseFrederic of inviting the pagan hordes to devastate Europe.

The Emperor scorned to reply to this crazy malice and sent hissons, Enzio and Conrad, against the "opposing Devils" as he calledthem, and issued one of his grandiose summonses "to every noble andrenowned country lying under the Star of the West" to help defeatthe barbarians whom "Satan himself has lured hither to die beforethe Victorious Eagles of Imperial Europe."

The response to his eloquent appeal was poor, and it was left tothe chivalry of Germany to turn back the tide of Tartar invasioninto the unknown regions of Asia whence it came.

Meanwhile the inexorable Pope, defeated on every hand, summoneda General Council of the Christian hierarchy with the avowed objectof deposing Frederic.

The Emperor not only refused to submit to such a tribunal, buthis allies, the Pisans, captured the Genoese fleet that was bearingthe bulk of the prelates to the conclave; these priests, by Enzio'sorders, were chained and cast into miserable prisons where, inwretchedness and disease, they had dismal leisure to repent theirfolly in obeying the papal mandate.

Frederic now advanced on Rome and captured the town ofMonteforte; this last loss was too much even for the iron-heartedPope, still breathing fury against his enemy, for his implacablespirit and his exhausted body in the hot summer of 1242; he hadbeen dauntless to the last and shown a blaze of courage that wouldhave been wholly admirable if it had not been inspired by a blazeof hate.

"He is dead," said Frederic serenely, "through whom Peace wasbanished from the Earth and Discord prospered."

But he had left heirs.

For two years Christendom was without a Pope, the internecinewar flickered in Lombardy and Frederic retired to lovely Foggio,there to enjoy some of that sumptuous leisure in which hedelighted, and of which he had known little of late.

Here his third Empress, Isabella of the "excelling beauty,"died, and here he heard that his eldest son, Henry, had dashed hisbrains out in despair at the rigours of his Apulian prison.

"We are not the first nor shall we be the last," said Fredericwith his smiling irony, now more hard and bitter, "to mourn anungrateful son."

In June, 1243, Cardinal Sinibaldo Fiescho, of the great Genoesefamily, was elected Pope under the name of Innocent IV.

The new Pope, quarrelsome, avaricious, arrogant, and maliciousto a superlative degree, had no virtue unless the courage withwhich he maintained his odious pretensions be considered one.

His reign began with the exchange of cold courtesies betweenhimself and the wary Frederic, but causes for disagreementimmediately arose; at the instigation of the priests the imperialgarrison of Viterbo was murdered by the populace. Frederic hangedtwo mendicant friars (the Franciscans and Dominicans were papalagents and spies, and perpetually employed in fomentingdisturbances among the lower classes) and the long negotiationsthat followed were both irritating and futile.

Frederic wished for peace in which to attend to his own affairs,but Innocent did not desire any means of concord, he beguiled anddeceived the Emperor in every way, and followed his predecessor'spolicy of rousing Europe against Frederic and extorting money fromabroad to carry on his campaign against the imperial power.

"May the Devil fly away with you!" cried the harassed Henry ofEngland to one of the Legates who came demanding money for Rome,and the angry barons hustled the unpopular priest out of England;for all that Innocent did extort vast sums from that country,almost to the point of draining dry what he called "our garden ofdelights, our inexhaustible well."

Meanwhile Frederic harried Lombardy and the Pope pronouncedanother of those anathemas that had lost effect through toofrequent repetition.

The next step was the Council of Lyons held in 1245, whereInnocent by his own mouth, and Frederic by that of Thaddeus ofSeussa, charged and counter-charged each other with a long list ofcrimes.

In the end, Innocent, dashing a lighted torch on the ground,formally deposed Frederic from his throne, crying in the gatheringgloom of the convent, as the Cardinals' torches followed his intodarkness:

"So be the glory and fortune of the Emperor extinguished uponearth!"

Frederic was at Turin when the news of this terrific maledictionwas brought to him; he rose from amidst his superb company andcommanded his treasure chest to be brought to him.

When it was opened before him he took out the imperial crown andplaced it himself on his head, crowning himself as he had crownedhimself before in Jerusalem, in the Pope's despite.

"The Pope has deprived me of my crown. Not one of my crowns butis here."

And then he added those words that are surely as superblyarrogant as any ever uttered by man, the utmost challenge of humanpride to human pride:

"I hold my Crown of God alone, and neither the Pope nor theDevil, nor the Council, shall rend it from me. Does he, in hisvulgar pride, think that he shall hurl me from the Imperialdignity; me, who am the Chief Prince of all the World, yea, who amwithout an equal?

"I am now released from all respect; I am set free from all tiesof love and peace; no longer need I keep any measure with thisman."

So spoke Frederic—"of God alone"; but who was Frederic'sGod?

He knew now that between himself and Innocent it was a fight forlife, a struggle so fierce and ruthless that everything would belost sight of but the lust of the death grips; every evil force,every vile passion, every cruelty, all manner of lies andtreacheries, every aspect of hate was let loose, like a team ofhellish monsters, on Frederic and his dominions.

Only some humiliation like the humiliation of Henry at Canossamight have placated the Pope, and such a humiliation it was not inFrederic's nature to make.

He sent envoys to every Court of his fellow kings, stating hiscase, as did Innocent; the Pope's denunciations were of ghastlyfury. Frederic was a beast, a viper, his forehead was of brass, hisportion was Hell, he and his progeny were relegated to eternaldamnation.

No foreign prince was roused to interfere in the atrociousstruggle convulsing Central Europe and Italy; every one shudderedaway from the horror of the conflict between two such terrific andmighty powers.

While Frederic was grimly fighting in Lombardy, Innocent hatcheda conspiracy against his life, which the Emperor discovered,punishing the culprits with hideous severity.

Innocent then cast about to find an emperor to put in the placeof the deposed Hohenstaufen; he set up Henry of Thuringia, and,after his immediate death, William of Holland, an ambitiousstripling, who was crowned in Aix-la-Chapelle thirty-two yearsafter Frederic had received there the crown of Carolus Magnus.

Frederic's son, Conrad, began to fall back in Germany, and amidthe appalling confusion of Italy the eagles were beginning tofalter and sink behind the myriad standards of the rebels.

A deep melancholy settled on Frederic as he hurled himself fromcity to city, from castle to castle; his task had becomeoverwhelming, and he was no longer young.

At fifty years of age he had to face a titanic upheaval of hisentire life work, to combat a ring of enemies so close andinexorable that he did not know where to strike first; every daybrought news of some fresh defection, some new revolt, some morebitter insult from Pope or friar, some falling off of a faintfriend, some pouncing of a malicious foe; he was stripped of allhis intellectual pursuits in which he so delighted, his deliciousrepose, his beautiful courtly pleasures; no more for him thebuilding of alabaster palaces by azure seas, the discussion ofabstruse problems with silk-clad sages on marble terraces, thewriting of love sonnets or books on hawking, no more experimentswith the mysteries of this world and other worlds, no moresumptuous festivals, flower adorned, scented with cassia and myrrh,sweet with the songs of troubadours and warm southern twilights;useless now magicians and wise men and troops of dancing-girls andgauze-shrouded odalisques behind gilded lattices, no time for this,for any of this, all that remained was war, replete with everycirc*mstance of horror; everywhere were strife and desolation, theuprooting of beauty and peace and ease by bloody hands, thedestruction of progress and art and commerce by spear and sword andfire; where Frederic had set fair kingdoms, which had been theexample of the world, were now anarchy and plague and allabomination.

And at Lyons sat the monstrous Pope, glutted with blood, gorgedwith hate, satiated with gold, ringed round with superstitiousterrors, drawing in treasure from all corners of the earth for thismost dreadful war, finding allies in every evil passion known toman.

In face of this, the mightiest accumulation of forces everranged against a single human being, Frederic maintained his loftypride, often scowling and bitter now, but never downcast orsubmissive; he never considered surrender or cessation of thestruggle, and he exerted every nerve to continue the unequal fight,the end of which he by now had foreseen.

Not only did there stare in his face the prospect of incessantand ruthless strife for the rest of his days, but the prospect ofthe ruin of the House of Hohenstaufen, which he had hoped wouldlead the world through countless ages.

Looking round him on the seething ruin of anarchy to which hiskingdoms were reduced, Frederic must have foreseen the extinction,not only of his power, but of his family, and tasted inanticipation the agony of that day in Naples when his grandson, theyoung Conradin, would pay on the scaffold the tribute of the lastdrop of Hohenstaufen blood to Hohenstaufen pride.

Yet, even with his eyes turned towards the gathering doom,Frederic maintained stoic fortitude; there remained close by hisside some friends of his youth, Thaddeus of Seussa, Pietro da Vineaand a woman, Bianca da Lancia, mother of the gallant Manfred; inthe wane of her beauty and his fortune Frederic had married her, atribute to her long affection, and perhaps an expression of a loveoutlasting passion on his part; the marriage of the deposed,excommunicated Hohenstaufen was only partially recognised, but wasboth a dignity and a solace to the faithful woman and her nobleson.

In May, 1247, Frederic, gathering all his power together, hurledhimself across the Alps with something of the superb daring of hisyouth, and advanced on Lyons where his loathsome enemy wasensconced; Innocent screamed to France for succour, and Louis IX,who, for all his saintliness, was a childish slave of grosssuperstition, saw in the dreadful Pope only the representative ofGod on earth, and offered the whole chivalry of France againstFrederic.

This did not deter the Emperor from proceeding on his grim marchto Lyons; but he was forced to abandon this bold and magnificententerprise by the news of the fall of Parma, taken by the papalforces through treachery and guile.

Whipped to fury, the Emperor hastened back over the Alps andthrew his still resplendent armies round Parma, a city in every wayimportant to the imperial cause.

With him were his two sons, King Enzio, and Conrad and Eccelinda Romano, his dreadful lieutenant. By the end of the year Parmawas so completely and artfully surrounded that relief seemedhopeless.

Frederic had also erected, for himself and his troops, a castleand city outside Parma, which he called Vittoria, in haughtyanticipation of his coming triumph, which was to be he thoughtanother Cortenuova.

So sure appeared the fall of the beleaguered city that theimperial troops became careless, and, on a February morning in1248, Frederic left Vittoria for a hunting expedition on the plainsof Lombardy, then temptingly sweet with the first airs ofspring.

Immediately there was a sally from the south gate of Parma,which attracted the attention of the Imperialists; this was afeint; the Parmese made a magnificent and desperate onslaught onVittoria, inspired by the despair born of famine and the prospectof the unspeakable fate awaiting them when the town fell.

Frederic, galloping over the lovely plains in the chase, chancedto turn in the saddle and behold the horizon flaming red.

With horror in his heart the Emperor dashed back towardsVittoria; when he reached the imperial fortress nothing was left ofit but a roaring furnace and crashing towers; the Parmese, pouringout of the beleaguered city, had utterly overwhelmed the Emperor'stroops, Thaddeus of Seussa had been torn to pieces, the very seals,sceptre, and crown of Frederic had been seized, the imperial diademworn by a deformed dwarf in the lunatic and ribald triumph of theParmese, the frantic exultations of the Guelfs.

Frederic was unable to force his way through the stream offugitives; he and his personal retinue were swept back along theCremona road by the flying hordes of his own defeated soldiery;dishevelled, exhausted, helpless, the Emperor was hustled in thepress.

The defeat was complete, the rout shameful, the humiliationbitter beyond all bitterness; Frederic entered Cremona amid therabble of his overthrown armies and the insults of the population;never had his fortunes seemed so dark, never had he been sopersonally lowered in the eyes of mankind.

His friend, Thaddeus of Seussa, had died hideously in thedisgraceful medley; the Emperor had not too many friends.

Frederic rallied from this crushing blow with an energy of prideand a swiftness of fury that compelled the awestruck admiration ofhis enemies; he who had so long defied the maledictions of Rome,and defended himself so skilfully against all the linked powers ofthis world and the next, began to be regarded as something morethan human, either God or devil.

While some saw in the invincible Hohenstaufen a Messiah sent tooverthrow the Antichrist of Rome, others beheld in him one of themonstrous beasts of Revelation, come to reign in terror and horrorupon earth; Frederic, again encamped on the smoking ruins ofVittoria, smiled bitterly beneath scowling brows at both aspects ofhis blazing fame and still presented his undiminished arrogance tohis manifold foes.

Louis IX, on his way to the crusades, interceded with the fellold Pope for Frederic, and begged that the ban might be removedfrom the Emperor and he be allowed to join the French chivalry inthe expedition to Palestine; but the plea of the saintly knight wasmade in vain; Innocent replied by cursing all the descendants,friends, and supporters of the "Great Dragon" to endlessgenerations.

And now a blow was struck at the dauntless Caesar that seemedlike a curse indeed; the story is obscure, but this much emergesfrom the half-legendary tales, that Pietro da Vinea, the Emperor'sdearest friend, raised by him from obscurity was induced, by whoknows what foul and secret ways, to attempt his master's life bypoisoning the very cup he handed him in amity.

Frederic had with utmost bitterness discovered the plot, andPietro da Vinea and his accomplices—all instruments ofInnocent—were punished in circ*mstances of incredible horror.

The Emperor showed more emotion over this treachery than he hadever been seen to display before, the clear ironic eyes were atlast dimmed with tears, the superb head bent in unappeasable woe;and his grief was swiftly followed by one yet more agonising, hisbeloved son, King Enzio, the beautiful, accomplished darling of hisheart, was captured by the papal forces and held prisoner inBologna, the Pope's own city.

Frederic frantically offered to fill the city's moats with gold,but all ransom was refused; for twenty-three years Enzio was togroan in captivity until, long after his father's death, his owncame to quench his withering hopes.

First Parma and the death of Thaddeus, then, Pietro da Vinea'sJudas act, then, the capture of his most beloved son; the heart ofFrederic shrunk in his breast, a slow languor crept over his limbs,grey, like handfuls of ashes, showed in the Hohenstaufen red of hislocks, his shaven cheek was haggard, his hawk-like eye dim, somemalady seemed to be consuming him, he had to endure hours of pain,nights of wakefulness, days of weakness, the intense pain of lonelydesolation.

He kept a cold, scornful face to his enemies—he launched out onthem with ruthless cruelty, blood and fire, rapine and torment,were his weapons also; every terror the mind of man could devise hesent out against the swarming friars and papal mercenaries, therebels and the traitors, who stalked his lands, and with suchferocious grandeur did he maintain his cause that Europe veered tohis side in the monstrous quarrel, and the power and prestige ofInnocent began to decline, even with the strength of theEmperor.

Frederic had aided King Louis in Palestine even in the midst ofhis own disasters, while the Pope spent the money scraped togetherby Christendom for the crusades, in his frantic campaigns againstFrederic, therefore when the French were miserably defeated inEgypt the blame fell, justly enough, on the violent and implacablePope; the two brothers of Louis IX came from Acre and menacedInnocent with the whole might of France if he did not make peacewith Frederic.

The Emperor had been victorious in Lombardy; Germany and Sicilystood firm to his cause; in France he had a new ally; England waswarmer towards him than towards Innocent, whose bloodthirstyhostility had alienated most nations. It seemed as if, even yet,the Hohenstaufen might again climb to that haughty height fromwhich the shadow of his sceptre would lie across the world.

But the tremendous fight was over; the Emperor was a dyingman.

Every day he felt his strength slipping from him, every day hefelt deeper indifference to material things, every day he broodedmore hopelessly over Pietro, Thaddeus, Enzio, and the destructionof the life's work.

The virulent hate of arrogant old men had destroyed the fruitsof his genius, rendered his great gifts useless, reduced to awilderness of confusion and misery and discord those dominions hehad so fondly cherished and so wisely governed.

Flung aside and trampled down were all his plans for progress,for enlightenment, for culture and civilisation, for a universaltolerance and peace.

Nothing remained; the insane furies of the Popes had set Europeback for hundreds of years, and all Frederic's works were to be buttales of wonder.

But the Emperor did not falter in his pride or bend from hispurpose. From the darkness and chaos gathering round him came hisserene challenge:

"Before this generation and the generation to come, I will havethe glory of resisting the papal tyranny."

Travelling to Lucera, his Saracen city, where was his lovelypalace, the dear scene of his hours of solace, the fainting Emperorcalled a halt in which to die.

The imperial train stopped at Fiorentino; it was December, theone sharp month of Sicilian winter, and the clouds hung dark overEtna and over the sea as the Emperor was carried by his Saracensoldiers to his death chamber.

He made his will, leaving the Empire of the world to his sons inturn, Conrad, Henry, Manfred. This last, the noble knight, theelegant scholar, the wise statesman, Bianca da Lancia's son, waswith him now, heavy with grief and the presentiment of doom. Andwith him also was Berard, the Archbishop of Palermo, who had beenwith him thirty-eight years before in the triumph of that firstdaring crossing of the Alps in all the surpassing pride ofyouth.

The languor of death evoked no complaint from FredericHohenstaufen, he displayed none of the grovelling terrors theexcommunicate Emperor, Otto of Brunswick, showed in his lastmoments, but he acceded to the prayer of the old priest, who hadbeen so loyal to him, and received from these ancient, faithfullips the absolution of the Church that had hounded him todeath.

For the last time the ironic light flashed in the grey eyes, theironic smile on the sensual mouth, and Frederic, pressing the handof the weeping Manfred, turned his calm face to the wall, and, on abrief sigh, died.

It was December 13th, 1250, less than a fortnight from theanniversary of his birth; he had lived his grand, terrible, andbeautiful life for nearly fifty-six years of unsurpassablesplendour, and was buried in what had been his earliest robe, thedark imperial purple, fitting symbol of his inviolate and justifiedpride.

2. WILLIAM III AND THE REVOLUTION OF 1688

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IMPORTANCE OF THE REVOLUTION—TWO OPINIONS

IT is always difficult and dangerous to describe isolatedepisodes of history; difficult, because every event, however neatlylabelled, must be the result of causes that are involved,far-reaching, and obscure; and dangerous, because, to consider oneepisode as if it were detached from all the other episodes thathave built up the story of a nation, is misleading in that it givesa false perspective. There are, however, some great events ofhistory that have been so persistently dramatised, sentimentalised,used to strengthen party propaganda or to fan religious zeal, that,heavily enriched by tradition and the inventions of the poet andthe novelist, they remain familiar by name even to those who carenothing for the forces that went to produce them and know nothingof the men who were their chief actors.

One of the most conspicuous of these episodes in English historyis the Revolution of 1688, which was not only outwardly exciting,dramatic, and romantic, calculated to remain long in the memory ofmen, but also of considerable political importance, both to thisisland and to Europe. The same cannot be claimed for other eventsdear to the popular imagination—for instance, the over-writtenrevolts of 1715 and 1745 were of no political significancewhatever, and the story of England would have been unaltered if theDuke of Monmouth, to whom so many enthusiastic books have beendevoted, had never been born.

But the upheaval of 1688 did introduce changes not only in ourconstitution, but even in our mode of thought and in our habit oflife, the effects of which are still felt to-day. National pride isfond of the phrase "the age of Anne," but most of the achievementsusually credited to the brief reign of that amiable nonentity hadat least their foundation in the years 1688-1702.

The Duke of Marlborough, ruler of the camp and Cabinet, and hiswife, ruler of the closet, carried out the foreign policy ofWilliam III of Orange and the domestic ideal of Mary II. These twopeople and those they encouraged left a very definite impress bothon England's position abroad and on her behaviour at home, none theless strong because it is often ignored. Moreover, as far as thisis ever possible in relating history, it is possible to draw a lineof demarcation between the reign of James II and those of hissuccessors, and to treat the revolution of 1688 as both a momentousand a separate event. It is not, however, very easy to do thiswithout devoting more space to considering the conditions andcharacters that produced the abrupt end of the male Stewart dynastythan can be spared in a brief essay.

Until recently, the almost unchallenged view held by historiansand laymen alike was that the Revolution of 1688 was as EdmundBurke proclaimed, "great and glorious." It was represented, verysimply, as a heroic effort on the part of noble-minded patriots toresist the crimes and errors of a besotted tyrant, and as the finaladjustment of that English Constitution which was so nearperfection as to serve as a model for the world. Many Whighistorians give the impression, perhaps unconsciously, that thisRevolution, proudly proclaimed as "bloodless," resulted in theformation of a model state that expanded smoothly along lines ofprogress until it culminated in the bland triumphs of Victoria,beyond which human felicity, in the opinion of these enthusiasts,could scarcely advance.

Children's lesson books of the middle and latter part of lastcentury gravely enjoined on the little readers the duty of thankingGod for the privileges they enjoyed as free-born English boys andgirls, who inherited their comfort and liberty from thoseancestors, who, with divine help, made an end of "brass money,wooden shoes, the Pope, and the King of France in 1688." This naivepoint of view was, no doubt, sincere, and contained some truth, butit should be remembered that the ruling dynasty and the dominantclasses were the direct result of 1688 and that these powerfulinfluences did all they could to extol the event that had giventhem eminence and wealth. Chairs of History at the Universitieswere founded with the sole object of enforcing the Whig side of thequestion, and the scholars who occupied these posts made it asdifficult to realise the Roman Catholic and Stewart ideals and aimsas it was to gain an understanding of the Plantagenets under therule of the Tudors.

The losing side was, as usual, not only beaten, but silenced andmisrepresented, and the winning side garnished with all possiblevirtues by those who enjoyed the fruits of the failure of theformer and the success of the latter. Not that there was often muchtendency to praise William of Orange; with the notable exceptionsof Hallam, Macaulay, and Seeley, the foreign prince was dismissedwith lukewarm admiration—his chief fault being that he was not anEnglishman. But it was for the native patriots, the men who werethe spiritual heirs of the Hampdens, the Vanes, the Sidneys, theRussells, that the highest encomiums were reserved. Whig andProtestant writers found glowing themes for their pens in theirdescription of how the liberties of England were preserved throughthe noble action of the bishops, the single-minded endeavours ofself-sacrificing statesmen, and the just indignation and courageousresistance of the people. To them it was a plain and impressivestory, James II was a fool, a tyrant, a bigot; he attempted,clumsily, illegally, and with gross cruelty, to interfere with theliberties of England, so dearly if somewhat vaguely cherished inthe breast of every Englishman since Magna Carta (in the opinion ofthe nineteenth century falsely important), and he endeavoured tooverturn the Anglican Church, the country's considered choice ofFaith, in favour of Roman Catholicism, forever associated in themind of the people with the fires of the Marian persecutions, andto introduce into the heart of native politics those Jesuitsconsidered hatefully typical of deceit, treachery, idolatry, anddarkly mysterious intrigue.

From these dangers, which nearly overwhelmed the independence ofEngland and almost destroyed the properties and gravely imperilledthe lives of her inhabitants, the country was saved by the purepatriotism and unselfish zeal of her Protestant leaders, backed bythe courage and common sense of the people. These saviours of theircountry invited the assistance of a Prince, the champion ofProtestantism, who also satisfied the English sense of law andorder by being the husband of the heiress to the Crown and himselfthe nearest Prince of the Blood. The historians of this school wereable, with justifiable complacency, to relate the complete successof this daring move, the ignoble flight of the rejected King, andthe triumphant installation of the nation's choice as the firstconstitutional monarch, together with the restoration of thereligion, the rights and privileges, so terribly endangered and sovaliantly rescued.

The story, which was not without its epic outline, then went onto describe the arduous war that resulted as the French King'schampionship of the Stewarts, the domestic troubles that could not,however, shake the steadfast national spirit, the final disposal ofthe discrowned tyrant as a glorious victory which had a secondmerit, that of once more teaching Ireland her place, themagnificent defeat of Louis XIV's naval power, together with suchcivilised benefits as a milled coinage, the Bank of England,consols, toleration for the Nonconformists, Bible Societies, decentpublic behaviour for gentlewomen, and the coming into fashion ofthose virtues hitherto considered dull and dowdy.

Having thus disposed of the Great Deliverer (not without someregret for his foreign friends and dry manners—it was felt that hehardly valued highly enough the honour done him by England) and theGlorious Revolution, the Whig historian proceeded, with an obvioussense of satisfaction, to the gratifying successes and undeniablesplendours of the Augustan Age, which were genuine home products.Even about "Brandy-faced Nan," the pious Whig chronicler was readyto murmur: "A poor thing, but mine own."

So in these succinct, straightforward accounts of 1688 and itsresults, national pride, the popular point of view, the politicalconvictions of the majority, tradition and loyalty to the House ofHanover, were alike served.

The day came when these motives no longer swayed the historianand when a powerful section of opinion, long-suppressed or ignored,found a voice. We then were shown the reverse of the medal anddiscovered that there was a very good defence available for whathad seemed indefensible, and a very keen difference of opinionwhere no such difference had seemed possible.

Roman Catholics, passionate advocates of that old cult known asthe "Romaunt" of the Stewarts, more or less impartial workers whowere tired of the old pompous formulae and the old, threadbarecatchwords, lively, inquisitive writers, eager to reverseestablished, historical judgments for the mere love of theparadoxical and the new, gave us very different pictures of anevent that had been almost sacrosanct in the opinion of ourancestors. James II, we then learned, was not only far from being atyrant and a bigot, he was a man with the interests of his countrypassionately at heart and sincerely anxious for religioustoleration. Foully betrayed by the machinations of men who couldnot appreciate his lofty idealism, and undermined by the slyintrigues of his ambitious son-in-law, the unfortunate monarch losthis throne, purely through the crimes of others and his fidelity toa hereditary Faith. Some writers even portrayed James II as a saintand a martyr, one too involved in an ecstasy of mysticism to beable to deal with the craft of lesser men, and they pointed to thesackcloth and ashes of his end in triumphant vindication of theircontention.

There is much material with which to strengthen this view of thedethroned monarch—the facts that one daughter took his crown andanother forsook him, the desertion of men like John Churchill, whoowed him much and in whom he had trusted, the callous doubledealing of men like Sunderland, to whom he had confided hisaffairs, the old man's despair, bewilderment, and piteous clingingto his morsel of the true Cross—all these details have been usedvery effectively by the champions of James II. Nor have they failedto use the romantic incidents of the young Queen's huddling herbaby to her breast in the dark and cold on Whitehall Stairs,waiting for French chivalry to rescue her from a nation of cads,the fallen King stopped in his flight and roughly mauled byfishermen in mistake for a "hatchet-faced Jesuit," and the stillmore poignant episode, so galling to English pride, when the Kingof England's sleep was disturbed by foreign guards as they weretaking the place of his own soldiery at his Palace gates.

The character of the Protestant hero or Great Deliverer doesnot, as may be expected, shine in the eyes of those who extol theman whom he displaced. He was, they declared, actuated by thebasest ambition, cloaked by a prudish display of piety; he gainedhis ends by duplicity of the meanest sort, and was only successfulbecause he agreed to accept the Crown shorn of its fairestprerogatives and because he was useful as a figurehead for therogues who engineered the Revolution. These Tory or Romanistwriters also pour contempt on the Englishmen who brought about thiscrisis, describing them as members of a new, powerful, money-madeclass who feared for their own estates and honours, and broughtabout the downfall of James II for ignoble ends, which theydisguised under popular catchwords likely to receive theapprobation of the common man.

In the opinion of this school of writers, then, the "Great andGlorious" Revolution was a sordid affair and the Great Deliverer apaltry adventurer, using the pretence of the public good to gratifyprivate ambition and employing the most odious treachery to thisend. In brief, they consider that all the virtue, nobility, andsincerity were on the side of the deposed King and that remnant ofthe aristocracy who remained faithful to him in his downfall.

This latter school of historians has been no more scrupulous inemphasising its points than were the Whig writers whose glaringpartiality their opponents so fiercely attacked. Examples ofviolent bias, almost incredible in scholars of intelligence, occuron each side of the question, and neither the defenders of theRevolution, nor those who abuse it, shrink from half-truths,suppression of evidence, bitter personal invective about thereputations of men who have long since been unable to reply, specialpleading, and emotional appeal.

The labours of these zealots, who are often brilliant advocates,masters of party tactics, and extremely able writers of politicalpamphlets, have much obscured the issues and caused the plain manto wonder what sort of truth it is that can be so variously and sopersuasively, represented. Loose thinking, fanaticism,carelessness, sheer spite, and dishonest manipulation or ignoringof material disfigure too many of the pages that re-tell thisepisode of history.

There remain the excellent academic histories written by men whohad no personal interest in the causes or ideals that so excitesome writers, and it is to these that we must turn if we wish toregain our sense of balance upset by the diatribes of thosehag-ridden by obsessions, or to satisfy our sense of justiceirritated by the sentimental and hysterical outpourings of thosewho have set an idol up and must champion it, even against allreason and common sense. The official historians have the fault oftheir virtues in a certain frigid traditionalism, which, whileimpartial and unprejudiced, tends to repeat disinterestedly formerjudgments without either investigation or enthusiasm.

The history textbooks put into the hands of young scholars, forinstance, do tend to present stereotyped characters and scenes,from which vitality is lacking and which are often marred bydefinite distortion, due not to the maltreatment of fact, but to acertain boredom felt by the writer and communicated to the reader.It is not easy to find an account of such an event as theRevolution of 1688 that is not either the work of a bigot, blindedby his own ardour, or that of a scientific historian faintlydisgusted with dead politics.

We may hope, however, that, with all the material available oneof our modern men of letters who know so well how to write bothwith impartiality and with zest, will give us a history of WilliamIII and of 1688 that will put that curious personality and thatfamiliar but so often mishandled event in true proportions andproper perspective.

Such a writer will draw on both Whig and Tory partisans, onProtestant and Roman Catholic authorities, on the panegyrics of theadmirers of William III and on those of James II, and on thehandsomely documented labours of professional historians, and byusing his own acumen and judgment, he will arrive at some more orless truthful picture of happenings that have caused suchimpassioned controversy but that are, surely, now sufficientlydistant to be regarded by all save the zealot with impartialdetachment.

THE MEANING OF THE REVOLUTION

TO the serious student of humanity the interest of allrevolutions must largely lie in the question whether they are theresults of a resolute and prearranged attempt on the part ofthoughtful men to better, or change, a social system that hasproved a failure, or are more or less meaningless disturbancesprovoked by adventurers for their own advantage. To this largequestion those who are peculiarly interested in the story ofEngland may add another of local import—have the various revoltsand revolutions that have marked our annals been the fruits of theheroic efforts of large-minded patriots that have developed thenation along lines of steady progress, or have they been chanceupheavals caused by the intrigues of unscrupulous politicians orthe resistances of individual classes who have feared attacks ontheir wealth or privileges?

The answers to these questions are not likely to be much indispute. It is hardly to be denied that at least the majority ofrevolutions are not the work of good and noble men and do notproceed on idealistic lines and that our own changes of governmentdid not result from the indignation of patriots wounded by thecries of an oppressed people or from the inspiration oflofty-minded idealists scheming Utopias, but from the complicatedmotives and involved chicanery of classes and individuals workingfor their own private gain or venting selfish discontents.

In the ranks of the poor and simple, in the humble men of thePeasants' Revolt, in the followers of the Warbecks and Simnels, inthe rustics of Sedgemoor, in the Highlanders in 1715, 1745, mighthave been found single-mindedness, faith, and pure intentions—intheir leaders, seldom or never.

The Revolution of 1688 had for so long such praise and acclaimbecause it was so successful and because we have not verysubstantially altered the constitution then accepted by King,Estates, and people. It did produce a certain settlement ofnational government that has held good ever since, and for thatreason it was for long venerated by most Englishmen, and commands,even to-day, a certain measure of respect from the orthodox.Rightly so, it would seem, for it may reasonably be argued thatwhat a people have left untouched for two hundred and fifty yearsis more or less to their taste—or at least, to the taste of thoseclasses who have the power to effect changes.

The ugliest result of the Revolution—the spiteful laws againstRoman Catholics (though these were not nearly as severe as theymight have been)—was effaced over a hundred years ago, and, withthe exception of this, there was little in this adjustment of ourgovernment which was to be so durable, that was not based on thatmost solid of foundations—common sense. This steady structure thatthe Revolution of 1688 left us was further strengthened by theimportation—by some fantastic shuffling of hereditary claims—offoreign princes who had neither the ambition nor the abilities tocause serious trouble. As such general satisfaction was given bythe Revolution (witness the utter failure of the various attemptsof the last of the Stewarts to disturb England), it might beassumed that the Whig writers were correct in claiming it to be thework of genuine lovers of their country, supremely anxious for hergood. It will be discovered, however, on a close inspection of thefacts, that the Tory writers are not without some truth in theirvehement assertions that the organisers of the train of events thatfinally disposed of the House of Stewart were not only dishonestmen, but an unpleasant set of scoundrels.

How, then, did they come to accomplish a work that was solasting and useful, and what was the temper of the people whom theybeguiled into accepting it, and what were the positions andcharacters of the two Kings de jure and de facto,who, the former by his failings, and the latter for ulteriormotives, played into the hands of these clever adventurers?

ENGLAND FROM 1603—THE HOUSE OF STEWART

TO understand this we must glance back very briefly at thehistory of England to the year 1603. It was then, by an odd chance,that the first Stewart King ascended the English Throne. His claimcame twice through the female side and had been so desperatelydisputed by so many factions that he had only maintained it byacquiescing in the execution of his mother from whom it came, andby years of miserable truckling to the last of the Tudors. He wasgrotesquely unfitted for the monarchy after which he gaped soavidly, and is not admired even by the most fervent eulogists ofhis House. There is at least a possibility that he was the son ofan obscure Italian adventurer; if he was legitimate he hadinherited none of that famous beauty and charm which went so far incovering up the defects of the Stewarts.

This family have been sentimentalised and extolled to anastonishing degree. Their attraction for the romancists seems toconsist in their misfortunes, which were largely their own fault.The successive rulers produced by the marriage of Marjorie Bruceand Walter Stewart (1315), parents of the first Stewart King,Robert II, show several agreeable personalities who met the violentends usually meted out to the chieftains of barbaric peoples, andone notable man, James IV, who was, however, so little of astatesman as to risk serious issues on a chivalrous gesture.

Flodden Field is a superb subject for balladists, but is a sadproof of the incapacity of the monarch who fell there. Sir DavidLindsay, in addressing verses to James IV, recited hisaccomplishments, and then added: "with all this, sir, learn to be aking." This was a lesson that none of the Stewarts, with theexception, in a certain sense, of Charles II, ever did learn.

An ineffective Prince, James V, bequeathed his unstable Crown tohis daughter, Mary, whose story, essentially painful and sordid,has received more attention than that of any but few other famouswomen, until it glitters with all the splendour of what is known asromance. Shorn of the muddled fancy and loose traditions thatcluster round her name, the false dazzle of poetry and fiction, thetale of this Stewart Queen has an ugly, vulgar flavour and is farmore disgusting than entrancing.

Her claims to the English throne, which finally cost her herlife, brought the Stewarts to England. They had nothing of theability of the Plantagenets or the Tudors—there was never a HenryII, an Edward I, a Henry VII, among them, and it is difficult tounderstand why they have evoked such enthusiasm—an enthusiasmsometimes amounting to a cult or an idolatry. They were probably noworse than the contemporary sovereigns abroad, but not any better,and of the four who sat on the English throne, two were completelywithout the almost fabulous charm, wit, and fascination, for whichthis family has such a glittering reputation. Charles I wasrespectable, well-meaning, and governed with as much ability asmost kings of England, but lost his throne through his infringementof the privileges of the wealthy middle-class and his use of shiftypolicies that played into the hands of his opponents.

The people soon discovered, however, that they preferred thetyranny of the regal tax-gatherers to the tyranny of the Republicansoldiery, and the recall of Charles II greatly pleased the majorityof the nation, who had certainly found both Puritanism and amilitary autocracy highly objectionable.

The restored monarch was one of the most attractive of hisfamily, a gracious and agreeable man of the world, intelligent,witty, and shrewd, of some culture and endowed with that gaytolerance and that sense of comedy which make the perfectcompanion. He has been over-popularised in the wrong way by thegossip-writers of generations, whose avid interest in the meagredetails available about his kept women has obscured the moreimportant aspects of his character.

Anything in the nature of chroniques scandaleuses alwaysreceives disproportionate importance in the estimation of theuneducated, and though a most distinguished modern historian writesof "the foul heart and evil mind of Charles II" and gravely tellsus that he "debauched a whole generation," it is surely doubtfulwhether his example much affected more than a few of his subjectsor in anything altered the national character. The failure ofOliver Cromwell's fanatic laws against vice had proved once morethat it is impossible to legislate for good morals, though goodpolicing will enforce good manners.

The English people, supposed to have been so sorely corrupted byCharles II, quickly adopted at least an outward decorum when theatmosphere of the Court changed, and under William III and Annewere as well-behaved as they had been under Elizabeth or CharlesI.

Charles II was a clever politician and an adept at managinginternal affairs, though he was too much of a philosopher to take avery keen zest in statesmanship as long as his own desires weregratified. "It will all be the same a hundred years hence" mighthave been a suitable summing-up of his attitude. His lack of moralpurpose and of moral strength led him into several disgracefulactions, but it had some justification. It is only fair, whenconsidering him, to recall that sheet of blank paper he signed andsent to the Parliament in a desperate attempt to save his father.That was not the action of a cynic or a rogue and if Charlesafterwards developed a worldly indifferentism that often verged ondishonesty and trickery, it is obvious that his early experiencesmight easily have made him a far worse man than he was.

This kindly, skilful prince, after failing to secure a Catholicrevival, which would have swept away the last relics of aPuritanism that he found so odious, concentrated on a Frenchalliance as a safeguard against another possible rebellion, andthen, on the realisation of his own continued lack of legitimateissue, the preservation of the throne for the brother whom he wasthe first to recognise as most unlikely to keep it. As regards thecauses of 1688, the most important events of the reign of CharlesII (apart from the character and career of James himself) are theKing's dependence on Louis XIV, which prevented England fromjoining any affiance against France, and the marriage of MaryStewart, then heiress to the English crown, to the grandson ofCharles I, William of Orange, the man whose life work it was tobuild up a coalition against the Bourbons and who passionatelydesired adherence of England to his schemes.

The marriage of William and Mary was very naturally detestableto James, then Duke of York, a zealous Roman Catholic who had adeep antipathy to the country, the ideals, the religion, and thecharacter of his sister's son.

Charles II himself had been dubious about this scheme, but hadgiven way before the insistence of the bridegroom, the intrigues ofDanby, and the desire to make a popular gesture—the Protestantmarriage made a good effect upon a people always suspicious of thePope and the French.

There then seemed but little chance that the wife of the King,Catherine of Braganza, or the duch*ess of York would bear livingmale children (the last lady bore a son, who did not live, soonafter the marriage), and the prospect of Mary's succession to thethrone appeared as certain as it was soothing to those (and theywere many) who disliked James and feared Charles.

The union that had pleased the two countries (for in the UnitedProvinces all save extreme Republicans were gratified by the royalmarriage of the Stadtholder), promised little personal happiness toeither groom or bride. Mary was an ignorant, frivolous, sentimentalgirl of sixteen, already showing a taste for the coarse pleasuresof Whitehall, where she had just made her debut in a licentiousmasque, and was absorbed in a neurotic schoolgirl friendship withAnne Ashley, afterwards Lady Bathurst. She took her enforcedmarriage with a bad grace and signalised nuptials that seemedill-starred indeed with hysterical scenes of tears andlamentations.

Her cousin had not fascinated her at first sight, and had takenno trouble to please his future wife, whom he had chosen fromobvious reasons of policy.

In fact, so tremendously did the marriage strengthen William ofOrange's position in England and in Europe, so greatly did itincrease his importance, socially and politically, so profoundlydid it anger Louis XIV, the patron and paymaster of Charles II andthe English Parliament, that it is astonishing that it was everallowed to take place.

On this one occasion, James showed shrewder insight than hisbrother when he obstinately opposed the match that brought Williamof Orange so near the English throne, and Charles, for his owninterest, paid too high for the Stadtholder's consent to the Peaceof Nijmegen, 1678.

This marriage was the first important appearance on the Englishscene of the future William III, though he had been to Englandbefore on a ceremonial and futile visit. He was, by reason ofbirth, in a peculiar position among the princes of Europe, and, byreason of his qualities, in a peculiar position among mankind.

Although he stood further from the English throne than his wife,he was of nobler descent. Mary's mother was a commoner of amiddle-class family, the Hydes, raised to the peerage (the Earldomof Clarendon) by political success, and Mary herself had onlybarely escaped the fate of Monmouth, since her parents' marriage,dishonourable to both of them, had been so disputed as only to besaved by the careless tact of Charles II.

It is, therefore, an error to describe, as so many writers do,Mary as being of "superior birth" to her husband. William of Orangewas descended in the direct male line from William the Silent, whowas, though bearing an ancient French title, the heir ofgenerations of Counts of Nassau, one of whom had been Emperor ofthe West. His mother was Mary, eldest daughter of Charles I, andthrough this proud melancholy woman who had died in the first weeksof her brother's restoration, he inherited the claim to Englishsovereignty, derived from Edward the Confessor, that was so muchrespected.

His title of Orange (though the town and revenues remained inthe hands of Louis XIV) was par la grâce de Dieu—that is,an independent sovereignty, so that he acknowledged no overlord. Heheld also several other notable lordships, and owned vast estatesand much personal wealth; his most precious possession, however,was the extraordinary fame and honour that a succession ofremarkable men had given to his title, and that he himself hadembellished with an even more brilliant lustre.

His widowed mother had borne him in a shrouded, black-hung rooma year after the execution of her father, Charles I, and in thetotal eclipse of her late husband's fortune. A stupid attempt at acoup d'état against that stolid bulwark of money-makers andmercantile prosperity, Amsterdam, had cost the son of FredericHenry, the victor of Nieuport and one of the finest soldiers of hisday, all that the gratitude of the Dutch people had showered on the"father of his country"—William I.

Heir, then, to a double misfortune, born prematurely, and sodelicate that his life was despaired of, William III of Orangeseemed to have but a dismal prospect before him in the year 1650.As a direct result of the ill-judged audacity of William II, theoffice of Stadtholder held by four princes of the House of Nassauwas abolished, and the very complicated government of the UnitedProvinces was administered by an oligarchy, at the head of whichwas Johann de Witt (1625-1672), Grand Pensionary of the Province ofHolland, who, by methods not altogether candid, had made theexclusion of the House of Orange from power, a condition of thepeace with Oliver Cromwell—First Treaty of Westminster, 1654.

The infant Prince, shorn of his ancestral glories, but stillregarded as their future hope by a large though, for the moment,defeated party, was made a "child of state" and brought up underthe personal care of the Grand Pensionary.

This statesman was as honest and single-minded a man as any whoever entered politics, and he applied himself with earnestsincerity to the task of creating a patriotic republican out of theheir of Nassau and Stewart. This endeavour, at once idealistic andclumsy, was a total failure. The boy, isolated, unhappy, strictlytrained; cherishing a bitter sense of wrong, showed remarkablesigns of intellectual precocity, which impressed all who met him,and an extraordinary firmness of character, which raised very highthe expectations of his numerous adherents. He soon made itperfectly clear that he intended to fight, inch by inch, all whoopposed a complete return of the posts and honours he considereddue to his birth.

His position had been strengthened by the restoration (1660) ofhis uncle and guardian, Charles II, who, with his brothers, Jamesand Henry, had passed part of his exile on his nephew's estates.Mary had lavishly helped her brothers and had impoverished herson's estates to do so, and Charles showed same lukewarm gratitudein halfhearted attempts to help the son of the sister who hadalmost ruined herself to help him in his misery.

It was not, however, either to the active intrigues of theOrange party or to the deep affection of the Dutch for thedescendant of William the Silent, or to the lazy efforts of hisroyal uncle that the young Prince was to owe his reinstatement tothe forfeited honours of his House with the addition of more powerthan any former Stadtholder of Holland had ever dreamed ofpossessing.

THE RISE TO POWER OF WILLIAM OF ORANGE

JOHANN DE WITT and his brother, Cornelius, the Admiral, andthose associated with them in the government were idealists,pacifists, republicans, and men of rare integrity, industry, andzeal for the public welfare. They amassed no personal fortune,grasped at no personal honours, and held themselves, as far aspossible, above the shifts and tricks employed by all thepoliticians of Europe. Johann de Witt, with his spotless privatereputation, his austere public life, his stern simplicity, andunbending dignity, affected the character of a Romanmagistrate—and was almost a symbolic figure of incorruptiblejustice, piety, domestic virtue, and patriotic ardour. His brother,Cornelius, was in character similar, though bolder and harsher, anda famous admiral, even among the naval officers of a people thenmaster of the sea, and had finely distinguished himself in threewars.

The faults of the Grand Pensionary were obstinacy,narrow-mindedness, lack of worldly wisdom, and, possibly,self-conceit. He did not, at least, find it easy to admit himselfmistaken or in the wrong, and his very virtues had that excesswhich shows that lack of humour, of wit, and of sense of proportionwhich so often springs from over self-confidence.

De Witt's piety tended to bigotry, his patriotism to partypolitics, his idealism hardened into a stubborn adherence topreconceived ideas. Being so passionately a republican he deploreddeeply the ascendancy gained by the House of Orange in theNetherlands, and concentrated all his talents on keeping the youngPrince and his partisans out of any semblance of power. He showedconsiderable skill in dealing with foreign policy, particularly inaccommodating himself to the violent changes of government inEngland, and he saw Holland through three naval wars—the firstAnglo-Dutch War, 1652-1654, War in the Baltic, 1656-1660, thesecond Anglo-Dutch War, 1665-1667—which were all to her advantageand her glory. He also did his best to remain on good terms withFrance, whose King was beginning to show signs of that thirst forthe revival of the Western Empire of Charlemagne which was toconvulse Europe for forty years (1672-1713). In all his actionsthis upright man showed that "clear and round dealing" whichFrancis Bacon declared "is the honour of man's nature."

Too much of De Witt's attention, however, was taken up withcurbing the growing ambition of William of Orange, and in checkingthe intrigues of his numerous adherents. There is no doubt that heintroduced some personal bitterness into this contest and that hewas quite unable to see any good in the parties opposed to his own.This feeling, the Prince, who had during a lonely childhood broodeddeeply over his own wretched position and the past splendours ofhis ancestors, fiercely returned. Between the middle-agedexperienced statesman and the youth scarcely free from tutelage,something like hatred passed.

It was the same kind of animosity, at once political andpersonal, as that exchanged between Maurice of Orange and Johannvan Olden Barneveldt. By the year 1672, it might have been clear toan impartial observer that the same country could not long continueto hold two such conflicting personalities as William of Orange andJohann de Witt.

A totally unexpected catastrophe soon removed the elder man fromthe scene and put the younger in possession of all the power andresponsibility that he had longed for since he had been able tospell over a history book. Johann de Witt, despite his gifts andvirtues, committed the one crime never pardoned in a statesman—hefailed, and through a blunder. He entirely misunderstood thecharacter of the man who sat on the throne of France. This country,which had steadily increased in importance since it was firstconsolidated by the genius of Louis XI, was then ruled by anabsolute monarch, the third king of the House of Bourbon, who hadinherited the magnificent organisation, the superb public servants,the wealth, commerce, security abroad, and prosperity at home,built up by the great Cardinal Richelieu and his successor, theItalian Mazarin. This prince, Louis XIV, King of France andNavarre, was a man of mediocre intelligence, poor education, andnegative personal qualities; he was, moreover, obsessed with avanity and bigotry that increased until insanity seemed to dictatehis policies (Revocation of Edict of Nantes, 1685).

It might be argued that there was something insane about theinvasion of the Netherlands in 1672 for no better reason than adesire to show off the armies Louvois had organised, and Turenneand Condé led, and because of offence taken at derisive medals andpamphlets struck and issued in Holland.

A miserable and suppressed childhood and a limited fund ofcommon sense had given Louis a half-crazy idea of his ownimportance, which caused him to irk at the very thought of theexistence of this prosperous little nation of traders, bankers, andfarmers, who knew so well how to regulate their own affairs, andwho held such an important place in Europe with such impressivedignity. The haughty Prince with mighty engines for mischief readyto his wilful hand desired to wipe out this "nation of shopkeeperswho smelt of cheese." When he learned that a medal had been struckshowing M. Van Berningen, the Dutch Ambassador at Paris, as Joshuatelling the sun to stop, with obvious reference to his own fancy tobe known as "roi soleil" or "Phoebus," he decided that only thedevastation of an entire nation could fitly avenge the insult.

The attack that this magnificently equipped King launched on theunsuspicious Provinces was one that Johann de Witt was totallyunprepared to meet.

The blind trust in his good luck, which so often betrays theidealist, had let the Grand Pensionary neglect even reasonableprecautions against a possible war. He had ruled for twenty yearswith ability and honesty five of the Seven Provinces (Friesland andGroningen remained staunch to their Stadtholders of a cadet branchof the House of Nassau) and held his own in the extremely difficultEuropean situation, but he had made no provision whatever for sucha catastrophe as now befell a people who had been unmolested,comfortable, and prosperous since they had finally shaken free fromPhilip II nearly a hundred years before' and who consideredthemselves secured by the Peace of Westphalia. Johann de Witttrusted in the good faith of England, nominal ally of the Provincesby the Triple Alliance, 1668, and he did not know of the secretTreaty of Dover, 1670, or guess at the callous betrayal thatCharles II was intending. Sweden, the third member of the Alliance,also deserted De Witt.

The army, which under Maurice and Frederic Henry had constitutedthe foremost military school of Europe and won victory aftervictory, was almost non-existent, the fortifications had beenneglected, the people, after two generations of peace, were utterlyuntrained for modern warfare, to which all their interests andtastes were opposed. It was inevitable, under these circ*mstances,that the panic resultant on a rapid foreign invasion without adeclaration of war, which the country was helpless to withstand,should quickly culminate in a violent revolution.

The French under Condé, shouting "Death to the vermin!" enteredthe country by the famous passage of the Rhine, termed by NapoleonI "a fourth-rate military exploit," and at once occupied the wholeProvince of Utrecht.

The people, happy and prosperous under Johann de Witt but facedwith utter ruin through organised robbery and murder on anoverwhelming scale (Louis's much-advertised campaign, stripped ofall the laurels, gilding, the Te Deums and Court panegyrics, wasmerely an act of banditry), blamed their unlucky representative fortheir plight.

Nor did the Orange party, representing the aristocracy, theprofessional soldiers, and many of the wealthy burghers, fail topoint to the empty arsenals and unstocked granaries, the decayedforts, the skeleton regiments, the miserable remnant of the superbfighting equipment created and fostered by the House of Orange.Again, though the charge of corruption against the government wasunjust, it was true that many of the merchant class, supporters ofDe Witt, had been unable, either too confident or too careless, torefrain from selling to France saltpetre, lead, and other materialsof war, which were to be used for their own destruction.

De Witt was then, not unreasonably, accused of neglect, ofnepotism—too many of his incapable relations were in officialposts—and finally in the popular anguish, as town after town fellbefore the march of the finest troops in the world, of selling hiscountry to France.

In a panic of excitement, the man who had been for so longesteemed and trusted, was cast from office while supreme power infield and cabinet was given to the Prince, who had for thetwenty-two years of his life been painstakingly kept in thebackground. Political agitators, inspired by De Witt's enemies,helped to fan the flame that, at the touch of personal peril,sprang from the long-smouldering discontents against the party inpower.

Sir William Temple had some while before noted a growingrestlessness against the De Witt oligarchy—and thought it only dueto "the desire of those who have long been out, to get in."

In 1672 more poignant motives inspired the people; they feltthemselves directly betrayed by the staunch Republican's reversalof the military rule of the House of Orange, if not by hisacceptance of French gold, and their vengeance was swift, crude,and terrible.

Cornelius de Witt was falsely accused of an attempt toassassinate the young Prince, in whose life the very existence ofthe United Provinces seemed bound up. The staunch, honest man, whohad so valiantly served his country, was put to the torture andlodged in the Gevangenpoort at the Hague, the hideous prison of theSpanish Inquisition, which was a relic of Philip II's rule.

There, on August 22nd, the fallen statesman, for twenty yearsthe most important man in the country, visited his sick brother,the mob surrounded the prison and became so threatening that themagistrates, with unaccountable cowardice or contemptible malice,ordered the withdrawal of Count Tilly's guard. The people thenbroke into the room where the De Witt brothers awaited with serenecourage the incredible atrocity of their end.

They were dragged out and murdered, with every circ*mstance thatthe barbaric ignorance of panic cruelty could devise, and theirbodies were treated with revolting bestial*ty of an unprintablenature.

William of Orange has been regarded as responsible for thiscrime, or at least as approving of it when it was accomplished.This will always be a matter for dispute. Orangist agents, notablyone Michael Tichelear, undoubtedly inflamed the mob, and several ofthem drew pensions all their lives from William's estates; it wouldalso have been possible for the Prince to have come to the Hagueand to have calmed the furious crowd, and he made no attempt topunish the murderers, even by a rebuke, though he dismissed themagistrates who had not been able to keep order.

Thus much against the young Stadtholder; for him it may beargued that the De Witts were so completely ruined that they wereno longer in his way, and that their deaths brought him noadvantage. Nor was he of a vindictive nature, but remarkablyindifferent to personal injuries. He afterwards passed his wordthat he had not been cognisant of the crime, and his personalhonour was not lightly pledged.

If may be doubted if, in the chaotic state of the country, hecould have brought the ringleaders of the murderers to justice, orcould have prevented the mangled remains of these great men frombeing "swept with a broom into obscure graves." He may have felttowards Michael Tichelear as his ancestress, Mary Stewart,expressed herself about Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh when heassassinated Moray, her half-brother, the Regent: "I did notcommand the deed, but Bothwellhaugh shall have a pension."

When Johann de Witt had appealed to the Prince to justify himagainst the accusations of peculation, maladministration, andtreachery that were overwhelming him, William had replied by aletter that has been considered as ungenerous as it was clever. Itcontained, however, only the truth—the young Stadholder had alwaysbitterly opposed on the basic principles of hatred all the policiesof De Witt and fiercely resented the defenceless condition of hiscountry—nor had he concealed these feelings.

He was, therefore, justified in saying so when appealed to inthis desperate crisis; he was also correct in adding, with thatsevere disdain which he always applied to popular excitements—"asto the libels and pamphlets, even I have not been exempt fromthem." He was, indeed, to be traduced and slandered asunscrupulously and as persistently as any other public man has everbeen, and even now it is not easy to discern the real man behindthe clamours of party adulation and party spite.

Of one thing there can, however, be no doubt, and that is hisbehaviour in 1672. Only the bigoted or the callous could deny theepithet "heroic" to this, and to those who respond to thefascination of unshakable fortitude in the face of supreme disasterthere is something peculiarly moving about the entry of the forlornyoung Prince on the sordid scene of European politics.

All the incidents of his rise to power were highlydramatic—indeed, his whole life was extraordinary, romantic, andtragic, full of action, important events and swift changes offortune. About his character was an air of greatness not to bediscerned in any other public man of his day. This is to beascribed to the fact that he and he alone did not stand for merelypersonal ambition or personal glory, but some absolute ideal, whichhe describes again and again as la cause commune and forwhich he was prepared to make endless sacrifices.

This steady adherence to an ideal gives a nobility to his entirecareer—magnanimous is the epithet best suited to a Prince of whomnothing mean or petty is known. La cause commune was theunification of Europe against the power of France.

POSITION OF WILLIAM OF ORANGE, 1672-1678

IF there was any germ of statecraft behind the flamboyantinvasion of the United Provinces, backed by careful alliances, asit was, it was to attack eventually the Holy Roman Empire, thenunder the loose and languid rule of the Habsburgs, who were, in theopinion of Louis XIV, wearing the imperial diadem that was his owndue. Briefly, the aim of the Bourbon was to over-run Europe,crushing out Protestantism in his stride, and the aim of William ofOrange was to prevent him. Seldom can a task have seemed morehopeless than this appeared in 1672.

William was not, however, as he was so often represented, merely"The Protestant Hero"—"a man raised up by God...whom He had madestrong for Himself" as Bishop Burnet thought him to be. His aimswere political more than religious; he desired toleration for allcreeds and security for his own, but he was allied, during nearlythe whole of his life, to the Emperor and the King of Spain; someof his earliest companions in arms and firmest friends, Lorraine,Montecuculi, Vaudemont, were Roman Catholics, and in 1688, by dintof incessant tact and unswerving patience, he stood higher in theregard of the Pope, Innocent XI, than either Louis XIV or James IIand was able to gain the tacit assent of the Vatican to thedethronement of a fanatic Roman Catholic.

It might well be argued that a truly lofty and philosophic mindwould not have devoted itself with such zest to mundane affairs andthat a wider view would have discerned no particular reason forchecking the Bourbons, since their rule was likely to be as good asthat of any other potentate or ruling combination of parties, itmight be contended that Calvinism was not an admirable creed worthfighting for, and that the independence of the United Provinces wasnot worth involving Europe in war after war to preserve it.

If, however, a statesman takes this long view he is apt eitherto become, like Charles II, cynically indifferent to the way thingsdrift, or, like Sir William Temple, to retire in disdain to peachgrowing and essay writing.

"The government of the world is a great thing; but it is a verycoarse one, too, compared with the fineness of speculativeknowledge," meditated Lord Halifax.

William III cast no such scornful disinterested glance on themundane scene into which he made so tempestuous an entry in 1672.He was passionately of his own time, deeply concerned in the eventstaking place about him, painfully serious in his approach toreligion, politics, and those abstractions, liberty, patriotism,honour, and justice, that easy men of the world are ashamed to takeseriously. All that even his enemies can say against his earnestbehaviour in 1672 is that he was actuated by ambition and seizedthe opportunity of his country's downfall for his ownadvantage.

There may be some truth in this accusation; it is almostimpossible to decide how far the actions of any man are inspired bypersonal and how far by public motives.

William III certainly demanded full powers and ample trust fromthe alarmed people who turned to him in despair. But once havingobtained them, he neither abused the first nor betrayed the second.He had ample opportunity and temptation to do so. When he rose toeminence at the age of twenty-one he found himself Captain-Generalof a small army miserably equipped and disorganised, falling backfrom frontiers already in the hands of the enemy, first magistrateof a state confused by an invasion and distracted by a revolution,a Prince with royal connections—Louis XIV was his second cousin,and Louis's ally, Charles II, his uncle—who was the chiefmagistrate of a republic and sole commander of her defences.

His task seemed in the eyes of his contemporaries ludicrouslyhopeless. The Dutch themselves had no spirit of resistance left andwere for accepting any humiliating terms Louis might deign to flingthem. Nor was William regarded by either of the two Kings asoffensive. They considered that he, too, had been wronged by theinsolent burghers, bankers, and tradespeople for whom they werepreparing so grievous a punishment. Louis was willing to begenerous to a cadet of his own House, and Charles wasgood-naturedly disposed towards his sister's son. It was suggestedthat William should surrender the few towns left him, and that inreturn, when France dismembered the United Provinces, he shouldreceive, out of the remnants, a little Duchy or Princedom under thesovereignty of Louis. This, together perhaps with the bâtonof a maréchal de France and the hand of one of Louis'sbastard daughters, was considered by Louis and Charles veryhandsome provision for a man of their own class, so unfortunatelyinvolved with Republicans and Puritans.

William had, however, some very positive qualities, among themthe rare virtue of patriotism. He really loved his country—thatprecise, neat, handsome, and prosperous land raised and kept by theincessant labour of her inhabitants above the sea—"the valiantsandbank" roused in William the warmest feelings of pride andaffection. He was also deeply attached to his hereditary Faith andcherished a keen sense of personal honour—sentiments scarcely tobe understood by his opponents. Added to this were a tenacity ofpurpose, an indomitable fortitude, and a stern resolution that haveseldom been equalled, and that from his first appearance on theEuropean scene profoundly impressed the world.

To these uncommon moral and intellectual qualities (hismentality within the limits of a material scope was of a very highorder) was joined a courage that nothing could shake. A member ofthat nation which William spent his entire energies in fightinggives this character of the Dutch Prince. "Un prince profond dansses vues, habile à former des ligues et à réunir les esprits...plusà craindre encore dans le secret du cabinet, qu' à la tête desarmées; un ennemi que la haine du nom français avoit rendu capabled'imaginer de grandes choses et de les exécuter; un de ces géniesqui semblent nés pour mouvoir a leur gré les peuples et lessouverains; un grand homme."

His behaviour in the crisis of the summer and autumn of 1672 isbest related in the words of contemporaries.

Sir William Temple, his friend who had always admired him,wrote: "The bait which the French thought could not fail of beingswallowed by the Prince, and about which the utmost artifice wasemployed, was the proposal of making him sovereign of the Provincesunder the sovereignty of England and France. And, to say truth, ata time when so little of the Provinces was left, and what remainedwas under water, and in so imminent a danger upon the first frostsof winter, this seemed a lure to which a meaner soul than that ofthe Prince might very well stoop. But he was above it, and hisanswers, always firm, that he would never betray a trust that wasgiven him nor ever sell the liberties of his country that hisancestors had so long defended. Yet the game he played was thenconsidered so desperate that one of his nearest servants told methat he had often expostulated it with his master and had asked himat last 'How he intended to live after Holland was lost?'

"The Prince replied that he was resolved to live upon the landshe had left in Germany, and that he would rather pass his life inhunting there than sell his country or his liberty to France at anyprice."

Of William's situation the Duke of Buckingham, who did not knowor like him, wrote, as one of Charles' Commissioners inHolland:

"We lost no time in endeavouring to ease his (William's) mindfrom the reproaches he made us upon the subject of the war, byletting him know in confidence to himself that His Majesty (CharlesII) would not be brought to begin it till he had conditioned thatthe Prince should find his account in it...we advised him tobethink himself well not only to remove the war out of his country,but to establish himself a sovereignty over it, wherein both Kings(Louis and Charles) would secure him at home and abroad from alldangers.

"He replied that he liked better the condition of Stadtholder,that they had given him and that he believed himself obliged inconscience and honour not to prefer his interest before hisobligation."

Gilbert Burnet, who admired, but did not understand or much likeWilliam, thus describes the English attempt to bribe the newlyappointed Stadtholder:

"That Prince (William) was so lifted up, that he seemed toconsider the King (Charles) very little...The Duke (Buckingham), atparting, pressed him much to put himself in the King's hands. ThePrince cut him short; he said that his country had trusted him andthat he would never deceive or betray them for any base ends of hisown.

"The Duke answered that he was not to think any more of hiscountry, for it no longer existed...and he repeated the words often'Do you not see that it is lost?'

"The Prince said, he saw it was indeed in great danger, butthere was a sure way never to see it lost, and that was to die inthe last ditch."

This expression has passed into the English language, butreference is seldom made to its originator. Curiously, too, it ismeaningless to us, for the reference is to the cutting of dykes,the desperate expedient whereby the higher levels of Holland hadbeen saved, by flooding the parts below sea-level, thus ringing theProvince with water as a defence. William meant that he would cutone dyke (ditch) after another and perish in the last.

Burnet also describes the young Prince as speaking passionately"to the amazement of all who heard him" to a packed assembly of theStates General, persuading them in an oration of "nearly threehours" (probably an overstatement) that it was possible to defendthemselves, even at that desperate juncture, thus putting "new lifeinto a country almost dead with fear and dispirited with so manylosses."

That these speeches and gestures were not mere bravado, Williamproved by his subsequent conduct. Both as a statesman and as asoldier he was successful. He did not achieve any spectacularvictory, for he was no match for Condé at Seneffe ("Would I hadonce served under him before serving against him!"), nor could hetake Maastricht. But with the capture of Grave, the fall of Bonn,and the juncture then with Montecuculi, 1673, the Emperor's generalmarching from Vienna, the French were definitely checked, and, intwo campaigns, the young Stadtholder had driven the enemy out ofthe country, consolidated for ever his domestic position, andbecome one of the most important factors in European politics.

The peace (that of Nijmegen, 1678) to which he was being forcedwhen he appeared at Whitehall as a suitor for his cousin's hand,was far from his liking, but it was also far from being asdetrimental to the United Provinces as the terms Louis had tossedto the States General in 1672.

William had also made an alliance with Spain, with FredericWilliam, the Great Elector of Brandenburg, his relation bymarriage, and with the Emperor, as well as established for himselfa considerable party in England, and already enjoyed the honour, asone historian puts it, "of being the second personage inEurope"—Louis XIV having first place.

THE CHARACTER OF WILLIAM III

THE Prince who was in this peculiar and important position, hada bizarre personality, to some fascinating, to others repellent;the chances of his birth and upbringing governed his whole life. Itis impossible to imagine him other than a Prince, a Calvinist, anda Dutchman. He was one of those who eagerly embrace the destinymarked out for them, he made no effort to evade the obligationslaid on him by the name he inherited, or to escape any of thefatigues, anxieties, and labours attendant on the course on whichhe embarked at the beginning of his career and from which he neverdeviated.

Charles II had early given up all attempts to seduce his nephewinto his own easy policies because he found him "too passionatelyDutch and Protestant." Indeed, it is difficult to find in historyany statesman who served with such single-mindedness of purpose asWilliam III during thirty years served his purpose of obtainingsecurity for the United Provinces and liberty of conscience towhich was inevitably joined the endeavour to check the power ofFrance.

This aim—the balance of power—may have had a national, even aparty flavour, but it was as high an aspiration as any thatanimated a Richelieu, a Louis XI, a Cecil, or a Henry VII.

Personal ambition, as his enemies aver, may have mingled withthis design. William was of autocratic sentiments, a professionalruler, a professional soldier, accustomed to rule in closet as incamp, and irking at restraint or opposition as much as any StewartKing. But it is impossible to read his huge correspondence, kept upwith tireless energy through sickness, defeat, failure, and sorrow,without realising the intense sincerity and simplicity of theresolve that lay behind the weary shifts, intrigues, submissions,and schemes to which the overworked, harassed, handicapped man wasforced to set his hand. There is something poignant, almostpainful, in this burning earnestness for a "cause" in a period whenthere were few who were earnest about anything save their personaladvantages.

Such was the Prince who in 1678 brought himself a step nearer tothe English throne by his marriage with Mary Stewart. In hisprivate character he was very different from the type thenfashionable at Whitehall, the Bucking-hams, the Rochesters, theSedleys. He was, what was very curious to the English courtiers,respectable.

Sir William Temple, his close friend, had noted that he waswithout any "admixture of vice" and he maintained in his bachelorCourt and in his camp the dignified decorum in which he had beenseverely trained, and that was the inflexible custom of hiscountry. Neither then nor at any other time could the activities ofthe lampoonists whom William had so early noted with contempt, domore than cast the slur of invented slanders against his name.These aspersions, largely resting, professional libellers apart, ona clumsy sentence of Bishop Burnet's (interpolated into a lateedition of his unreliable Memoirs), which probably relates to LadyBetty Villiers, have been eagerly seized upon by the apologists ofthe Stewarts, but have no foundation whatever, and only show thedepths to which spite will descend when trying to find a weak spotin a moral character.

William was not, of course, true to his "legend" any more thanany other historical figure. "The lips of ice, the heart of fire,"the unmoved Caesarean calm, the cold cutting word, the ironfortitude, the persistent silence, and so on, all thesecharacteristics have been overstressed for the sake of dramaticeffect, even by his admirers.

William had remarkable self-control and never lost his head in acrisis, but he was a human being, not a figurehead. His feelingswere passionate, his senses acute, and he often expressed himselfwarmly and even violently, nor was he always in the midst of abattle or seated before a pile of State papers. He hunted, playedcards and billiards, was a dilettante in pictures, gardens, andarchitecture, had a genius for friendship, was careful by principleand extravagant on occasion, could joke, enjoy a camp story, havetwenty-five violins to divert him when he was melancholy, and wascapable of transports of affection and agitated alternationsbetween hope and despair that threw him into illness and tears.

His appearance has also been grotesquely conventionalised byadulators and caricaturists.

"Great Nassau, who to Kneller's hand decree'd
To fix him graceful on the Bounding Steed,"

was unfortunate, indeed, in the versifiers and artists whoendeavoured to perpetuate his achievements and his person with suchdismal results in bombastic heroics and distorted daubs.

His person, tempting to the caricaturists and easily investedwith a heraldic, almost a symbolic aspect, was speedily familiarthroughout Europe, where the aquiline laurelled head with thecluster of oranges stood, even to the ignorant observer, for awhole chapter of contemporary politics. The man himself had animpressive public appearance, though short, slight, and of "a crazyconstitution." His long, dark, melancholy features resembled thoseof his mother and her brother, the Duke of Gloucester; there wasnothing Nordic about the Italianate appearance of this passionateDutchman.

His energy, his absorption in the business in hand, hisknowledge of every detail, of every enterprise that he undertook,an innate candour and absence of vitality made him admired andobeyed by those whom he led and gained him an unusual number ofdevoted friends.

"I was not born fearful," he wrote to Arlington, who had beenthreatening him with De Witt's fate, and there was a resplendencyabout his courage, moral and physical, that deeply impressed hiscontemporaries. "I did not mention the murderers, thinking itbeneath me," he wrote later in his life, the occasion being anopportunity of protesting to France against their employment ofassassins to dispose of him.

His one showy gift was superb horsemanship; for the rest, he wastotally without the art or the wish to please. He was notuniversally popular in his own country—Amsterdam, where French andRepublican interest was always strong, successor to Antwerp in theimportance of her international finance, was his declared opponent,and attempted, particularly under the Burgomaster De Witzen, tofrustrate and thwart all his policies.

When this Prince left England with his childish and reluctantbride, it was to devote himself to effacing the effects of a peace(Nijmegen), to him almost shameful, by preparing for another war.His chief desire in the slow and cautious combinations he wasmaking against Louis XIV was to detach England from her FrenchAlliance and bring her into opposition to the Bourbons; hispolitical plan turned on an endeavour to bring back the balancegiven to the interests of Europe by the Treaty of Westphalia,1648.

JAMES II

THE father of Mary Stewart is the other notable figure of theRevolution, the King de jure, who has been blamed andpraised as vehemently as the son-in-law who took his place.

This Prince had always been unfortunate, a youth of poverty andexile was followed by twenty years of humiliation as heir-apparentto his brother. A firm adherence to an unpopular Faith, carried toobstinate bigotry, deprived him of public office. He had to resignhis work at the Admiralty, which he had been carrying out with zealand industry, and to pass his time in gloomy inactivity, sometimesin exile in Edinburgh, or Brussels, sometimes in England, anxiouslywatching his chances of succession to the throne, which seemedlikely to be jeopardised not by his brilliant son-in-law, but bythe dull James Waters, Duke of Monmouth, King Charles' favouriteillegitimate son, about whose birth a number of silly tales, verydisturbing to James, were hatched by unscrupulous politicians.There is very little to chronicle about James, who seems not tohave had a single taste, gift, or interest beyond his fanaticismand his debauchery. This vice was of the most sordid kind. Theamours of Charles II, despite all the prettifying of the gossipwriters, are dull enough, but those of his brother lack any kind ofinterest—James was that unattractive type, sourly gloomy andgrossly licentious. The only woman of sense on whom his favoursfell, Catherine Sedley, took his money and mocked him as afool.

He took part in a naval action, the second Battle of Solebay, orSouthwold, June, 1665, when the Dutch under Obdam were defeated,not without incurring some censure on his personal courage; but thetale that he ordered his flagship to sail out of action isunproved, and some writers speak in praise of his behaviour on thisoccasion. Confirmation is not lacking, however, of his activecruelty, though there seem to be two opinions about his physicalcourage. To order death or torture for political offenders was thecustom of the age, but James liked to see these punishmentsinflicted, especially on the persons of Scottish Covenanters.

Thus, as he was without wit, generosity, sensitiveness,imagination, or compassion, it was not strange that he was withoutfriends and intensely unpopular, both with his own class and thepeople. His manners were good, but he had none of the legendaryStewart charm, and on public occasions was often ungracious withthe sour gloom of the disappointed and the inadequate.

His first marriage was the result of an intrigue with Anne Hyde,one of his sister's ladies and daughter of the first Earl ofClarendon. So little desire had he to marry her after theRestoration that he bribed a boon companion to swear he was alsoher accepted lover.

This union, so sordid on both sides, produced two Queens ofEngland, Mary and Anne. James showed some affection towards theyounger girl, but was cold in all his relationships, though thenoisy, passionate protests of his second wife, the handsome youngItalian, Maria Beatrix d'Este, backed as it was by the threats ofher priests, moved him to some intermittent marital fidelity,though even in his old age and defeat in Ireland he had two "oldtrollops" to comfort him in his distress.

There is a natural wish to be just towards one so unfortunate,so abused, and so unattractive, but it is indeed difficult to see,while keeping to the language of truth, what can be said for JamesII. Even if one regards him as a man inspired by an intensereligious conviction, he still appears incredibly wrong-headed andobtuse, for it was his actions that set back the cause oftoleration a hundred years. The disabilities under which RomanCatholics were to suffer until the nineteenth century were directlydue to the blunderings of their own champion. The miseries of theEnglish reprisals in Ireland that completed the ruin of a countryalready atrociously treated by Cromwell were due to the action ofJames in interfering with the rights of the Protestant colonialmajority.

In person James was tall, elegant, fair-headed with finefeatures marred by a sneer of forbidding bitterness. "A plain manin his nightgown" noted Pepys, but in the magnificent Riley in theNational Collection, James is a kingly figure who carries histrappings well. He lacked grievously a sense of humour and both hisportraits and his history suggest that he was dyspeptic.

His letters are inelegant and the laconic commonplace of whichthey are composed seems a not unfair estimate of his ability. Hismemoirs, which we have not altogether at first hand, have been muchstressed as showing his political acumen and his religiousenthusiasm. Even if we allow that they are wholly his own, theygive no different interpretation of his character from what wemight have gathered from his actions and his behaviour.

FROM THE MARRIAGE TO THE REVOLUTION

THE ten years that passed between 1678-1688 formed a rareinterval of peace in Western Europe. In the East the Emperor, withthe aid of mercenaries and volunteers, was holding back the Turks,but for the rest the smouldering causes of dispute had not brokeninto actual flame.

France was pre-eminent; she was still enjoying the mercantileprosperity that had reached its apogee under Colbert, 1665-1673,her armies and her generals were without rivals. Even after thedeath of Turenne at Salzbach after his most brilliant campaign andthe hideous outrages in the Palatinate, 1675, and the retirement ofCondé in the same year, there remained Catinat and Luxembourg,hunchbacked, loathed by the King, suspected of poisoning and theblack arts, but undefeated in the field, and Vauban, greatest ofmilitary engineers, who had taken Maastricht in William III's firstcampaign.

Added to her substantial power and wealth, France enjoyed anenormous prestige in the arts, in fashions, in all that appertainedto worldliness, brilliancy, wit, pleasure, and splendour. In everydepartment of seventeenth-century civilisation France dazzled eventhose of her contemporaries most alarmed or offended by herarrogant pretensions. Her own inhabitants were oblivious of drainedresources while blinded by the beams of glory and national pride,both most cleverly exploited.

The English King, to render himself independent of Parliamentand to secure himself against such another revolt as had dethronedhis father, became a pensioner of France. Almost every member ofParliament and most of the men who conducted the King's policieswere also in the pay of the French; this widespread corruptionreduced England to a cipher in European politics. In so far as thiskept her out of war and thus allowed a long period of peacefuldevelopment, besides exhausting a rival nation's capital, it wasnot an ill thing for the English people.

But it was lowering to the national prestige, and though lifemight have been easy enough to many people, a government thatstarved the public services, sent rotten ships and unpaid sailorsto sea, while loose women, panders, jobbers, and parasites lived inextravagant luxury either at the expense of the national revenue orby means of bribes from a foreigner, could scarcely, by anystandard, be termed a good government, or one that was likely tolast.

The growth of English democracy in the first half of theseventeenth century, the heritage of the political thought of theReformers, the groping after a definite philosophy of governmentalready manifest in the writings and efforts of several thoughtfulmen, could not remain long satisfied with this loose opportunistrule.

Nor were the strong Puritan element and the innately independentspirit of the common people other than offended, while powerfulbusiness interests, represented by the City of London, were waryand watchful. National finance, national religion, national pridewere therefore uneasy and suspicious.

William of Orange, as unofficial leader of the Englishopposition, kept in touch with all these malcontents, and possibleopponents of the government. At the same time he was careful tokeep on good terms with Charles and, when possible, with James,always patiently, prudently, and with remarkable ability, steeringhis course according to the wind, with one distant objective inview.

He was popular with two sections of the subjects of Charles II,with the Puritan element, the Nonconformists, in eclipse since1660, who looked up to him as a possible David or Joshua (many ofthese had made his acquaintance when in Holland, the asylum forpolitical and religious exiles), and with the stable, wealthy,middle- and merchant-classes who believed that he represented law,order, and common sense.

There seems to have been a feeling in England from 1672-1682that, as both the King and his brother were without legitimateheirs, affairs could remain very comfortably as they were until aProtestant Princess and husband, desirable to the majority,succeeded to the throne of their grandfather.

The bulk of the population were as comfortable as usual, and, asusual, but little affected by politics, and cared little for theminority who found good fishing in the corrupt waters of Whitehall,and less for that other minority who, stealing to and from theHague, dreamed of and planned a future when the sons of Belialshould no longer flourish.

Three men of genius adorned English Art and Letters: SirChristopher Wren (1632-1723) was raising his baroque temple on thesite of the largest Gothic temple in Europe, and John Dryden(1631-1700) was employing the ornate medium that he had made ofShakespeare's English in gorgeous satires against the King'senemies, while Samuel Butler (1612-1680), having written one of themost famous of English burlesques, was dying in obscurity.

In Science there was Isaac Newton (1642-1727), still inobscurity; in philosophy, John Locke (1632-1704), exiled withShaftesbury in the Hague where his "Letter on Toleration" is saidto have been read and pondered over by the Prince of Orange. Theranks of the Puritans produced John Bunyan (1628-1688), whoseingenuous exposition of his Faith has survived the theology itexploited.

Despite the peculiar position of William in English politics,despite the stream of English malcontents to the peaceful shelterof the Hague or Leyden, the Dutch were the natural mercantilerivals of the English, and far from popular with a nation whosmiled, spitefully, at the Laureate's "Ill-digested vomit of thesea" taunt against the rivals of England.

The Lowlanders, intelligent, hardy, enterprising andindustrious, were a hundred years ahead of the rest of Europe inall save the most luxurious and flamboyant of the Arts. Incommerce, colonisation, agriculture, crafts, science, economics,they exercised an enormous influence; Dutch trade, Dutch businessorganisations, Dutch banking, were ubiquitous—there was hardly adepartment of civilisation from shipbuilding to watchmaking inwhich the ingenuity and patience of the Netherlanders had not madethem pre-eminent.

In two naval wars they had proved themselves able to hold theirown with the successors of Drake and Raleigh; the sound of theirguns at Chatham had been a severe blow to English pride andself-confidence.

It is probable that the bulk of the English people shared thejealous dislike felt by the rest of Europe for the Republicans,with their exasperating, complicated government, their freedom ofthought, their exceeding prosperity, their tireless industry, andtheir plebeian respectability.

THE DEATH OF CHARLES II

ON the whole, England was satisfied with her condition, and onthe death of Charles II in 1685 his brother, though so unpopular,ascended the throne without any demonstrations of public vexation.William of Orange, who, imperious as he was, had done his utmost toplease one uncle, now resignedly but with good faith set himself toplease the other, with revived hope of detaching England from theFrench Alliance. Louis XIV, at the Truce of Ratisbon, 1684, was atthe height of his power and glory, he was almost sure of theSpanish Succession and had been confirmed in all his annexationsincluding Strassburg, Luxemburg, and Oudenarde.

The fribble Duke of Monmouth, who had been petted at the Haguewhile he was the King's beloved, if disgraced, son, was quickly, ifhonourably, dismissed, when he was the King's loathed and fearednephew.

Three years before the huge enterprise of 1688, William had nodefinite thought of armed interference with English affairs, but hecertainly looked forward either to the more or less passivealliance of James, or to Mary's succession to the English crown,when her elderly father should die without an heir. Immovable anddauntless, he still pursued his steadfast designs against LouisXIV, who seemed in such an impregnable position. But in 1686William had balanced the Treaty of Ratisbon by the League ofAugsburg, the fourth coalition against the aggression of France,masked as an agreement to maintain the Peace of Westphalia. Thesignatories were Spain, the Empire, the States General, Sweden, andBavaria.

THE MINISTERS

WHO, precisely, were the men and what the events that cost JamesII his Crown is not a question easy to answer in a small compass.The short reign of the last of the Stewarts seems a record of purefolly on the part of the King, and pure knavery on the part of hisadvisers.

Whether James II was a dense zealot or, as in the case of LouisXIV, a more fortunate but almost equally dull monarch, his desirefor power was bound up with enthusiasm for the true Faith, makeslittle difference to a judgment on his actions as King of England.Bigotry can never be interesting, and in persons occupyingpositions of authority is inevitably disastrous.

James's conduct can only be described as obstinately stupid. Hetook the oath—with mental reservations—as he wrote in apology toLouis XIV. In other words, he was entirely untrustworthy and didnot mean to keep the vow sworn to the nation—through both theCouncil and the Parliament—that he would maintain theConstitution.

His first Parliament was Tory and submissive, voted him a liferevenue, and seemed not in the least disposed to pick a quarrel. Acrazy rebellion, headed by the trivial Monmouth, was easilycrushed; it only served to show that there were some Englishrustics who had a simple faith in those fine abstractions,religion, patriotism, a Cause, and to darken the King's name by theseverity of the reprisals he took on the misguided peasants whofought as bravely at Sedgemoor as their forebears had fought atCrécy and Agincourt.

James's cruelties have been no doubt exaggerated, and LordJeffreys seems to have been a scapegoat for the sins of others, andeven for the barbarous customs of his times. Those who could payseem to have been pardoned. Still, the incredible sentences onAlice Lisle and Elizabeth Gaunt, the village executions, the gangsof chained prisoners, marching through London on their way toslavery, while the Queen and her ladies pocketed their price, thespectacular, if deserved, death of a romantic, pleasant young man,were not details calculated to make any government popular with thevulgar. Though all might have been lawful, it was harshly done, andsome magnanimity would have served the King's turn better.

James II ventured, however, on far more dangerous grounds whenhe began to show a reckless preference for Roman Catholics thatwarned the Protestant upper classes that not only were no covetedposts and privileges coming to them in the future, but that they,were likely to lose those that they had already received. LouisXIV, with his usual obtuse vanity, concurred heartily in the schemeto force a counter Reformation on England.

The Nonconformists joined with the Church of England inresisting this threat of regal and religious tyranny, and went tothe length of denying themselves the toleration promised by thefirst Declaration of Indulgence, 1687.

James II was not checked, however, even by the cold eye thatPope Innocent XI turned on his efforts. Without humour, wit, orunderstanding, without reflecting on his father's fate or the long,shrewd, patient tactics of his brother, he made crude and violentattacks on the privileges and property of the wealthy aristocracyand middle-class, as well as provided them with ample excuses toinflame the people, so easily roused by the cry of "No Popery!" Norhad James any personal popularity on which to rely; he wasgenerally disliked, while his patron, Louis XIV, was makingblunders on a large scale that did not improve the prestige ofabsolute or divine monarchy or Roman Catholicism in England.

The almost incredible stupidity of the Revocation of the Edictof Nantes and the "Dragonnades" (1685) was followed by the secondhideous devastation of the Palatinate, as deliberately planned apiece of murder, rapine, and robbery as the invasion of Holland in1672. Nor had Louis any excuse for this barbarous action; thesystematic massacres and ruin of a non-hostile province merelyre-created a waste between Alsace and the frontiers of theEmpire.

These events made a great noise in Europe, and served as usefulpropaganda for the Protestants (an enormous amount of pamphletssurvives to show the strength of feeling roused) while James's twosensational acts of tyranny, the ejection of the Fellows ofMagdalen College, Oxford, for resisting a Roman Catholic President,and the trial of the seven Bishops for sedition for their protestagainst the second Declaration of Indulgence (1688) served thepowerful classes he had alarmed and offended as good pretexts fortaking means to check his encroachments.

The men who surrounded the infatuated King had been bred in theRestoration school of politics and were nearly all unscrupulousopportunists, without lofty aims or indeed any definite scheme ofgovernment, but exceedingly able at keeping their places and makingprofit out of them, though there was not one of them, save Halifax,who had any ideas beyond the party politics.

Buckingham (1628-1687), the "man so various," after some yearsof elegant idleness, died on his Yorkshire estates, the year of theRevolution, almost forgotten, but by no means in "the worst inn'sworst room." Another able but unscrupulous politician, also twice avictim of Dryden's vivid satire, Shaftesbury (1621-1683), who hadendeavoured by the Exclusion Bill to prevent the accession ofJames, had fled disguised as a woman to Holland and had died in anobscure lodging in Amsterdam. Arlington, a clever party intriguerand an amiable courtier, connected by marriage with the House ofNassau, had died in retirement in 1685.

There remained Godolphin (1645-1712), industrious, careful, withan eye for the winning side; Danby (1631-1712), who had helped tobring about the marriage of the Prince of Orange—a restless,fashionable man of no great talents, completely unmoral, but anadept at party chicanery; Sunderland, brilliant, insinuating, anexpert in every shade of intrigue and with an ironic disregard ofeverything save his own advantage; the King's ineffectivebrothers-in-law, Lawrence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, Henry Hyde, Earlof Clarendon, the gloomy Nottingham, and one man of brilliantunderstanding, philosophic outlook, honest intentions, andhonourable conduct, George Savile, Marquess of Halifax (1633-1695).He delighted in the name of "Trimmer," asserting that the man whosits in the middle of the boat prevents it from upsetting. Hefailed to remark that unless the man who thus balances the craftpulls his weight as well he fails to help its progress.Fastidiousness and indifferentism, love of a sarcastic jest,finally withdrew Halifax from government, if not from public life.He died in opposition, his civilised ideals not having provedacceptable to the factions in Parliament which had rendered itimpossible for him to remain in the service of a master whom hemuch admired and to whom he might have been eminently useful.

Truly, politics was a dirty game in the seventeenth century, andmen with any delicacy who were not, like William III, vowed to adistinct purpose, might be forgiven if they threw down the soiled,marked cards and withdrew to meditation and leisure. "A man in acorrupted age must make a secret of his integrity, or unless hewill be looked upon as a common enemy" (Halifax).

Halifax, however, was active enough in the business of 1688, andthe orderly revolution and the sane settlement are thought by somehistorians to have the impression of his brilliant, civilised, anddignified mind. But, obviously, Halifax could not by himself havebrought about an event so abrupt and complicated, and as far as thesuccess of the venture, which seems easy in retrospect, but wasexceedingly bold, hazardous, and difficult can be ascribed to anyEnglishman it may be ascribed to Sunderland, who with consummateaddress and brilliant knavery led James II gently on the path toruin. He was deepest in the counsels of the foolish King and notonly did he betray his secrets with steady skill, but he advisedhim with unfaltering dexterity to take just those steps certain toprove fatal.

Those who consider the Revolution of 1688 a happy turn inEnglish history should give some of the credit to Sunder-. land,who must in their estimation have committed evil that good mightcome. William of Orange, who had an excellent system of spies and"intelligencers," received secret information of English affairsfrom many sources, but nothing was more valuable to him than thepackets that reached him by the hands of Henry Sydney from the Earlof Sunderland. The intermediary in this affair was the Countess,who was supposed to be Sydney's mistress.

Sunderland had gone too far in his time-serving for thesevaluable services to be duly rewarded; his reputation was too evilfor William III to venture to flout public opinion by employing orrewarding him (though Titus Oates was pensioned), as he was able toemploy the respectable Whig nobility such as the Russells, and theCavendishes, and the Talbots.

William, however, who had little hope of meeting many menhonest, intelligent, and willing to serve him in England, and whopreferred brilliant knavery to dull, weak virtue, always keptSunderland in his regard and consulted him secretly when able.

The Earl had the art of making himself agreeable and necessaryto any type of master; he was able to seduce a Jesuit or a DutchCalvinist with equal ease. Other men, notable rather from theirrank and position than from their qualities, who decided to resistand curb James with the help of his son-in-law, were Daniel French,Earl of Nottingham, champion of the Church of England, CharlesTalbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, the King of Hearts, the Earl ofDevonshire, and Edward Russell, cousin of the Lord William Russellwhose execution, so finely described by Burnet, had given a martyrto the Whigs.

There was a greater name than any of these signing the letter toWilliam that Dykvelt brought back with him to the Hague in 1687. Itwas that of John Churchill (1650-1722), afterwards the Duke ofMarlborough, over whose character there have been so manydisputes.

It can scarcely be said that any special pleading has been ableto prove that John Churchill was in anything above the low standardof his times. It cannot be denied that he had raised his fortunesby accepting money from the kept woman of one King and byacquiescing in his sister's being the kept woman of another, andthat, when the man who had been to him an easy master and hadtrusted him blindly was on the verge of ruin, he completed a long,secret treachery by an open desertion that was undoubtedly fatal tothe master whom he forsook.

It is useless to argue that Churchill risked the loss ofeverything by his action—he had a high intelligence and he waswell informed. He must have known from the moment that he enteredinto correspondence with William that the inept and blunderingJames was doomed.

Nor is it possible to credit that he was inspired by loftyideals of his country's good and a sincere fervour forProtestantism. Nothing in his life supports such a supposition, andif he had had any sense of honour at all he would have protestedopenly to James, not kept silent and betrayed him with deftcunning. To excuse Churchill's behaviour, public and private, assome endeavour to do, on the ground that he was only doing whateveryone else did, is to beg the question and to dismiss every codeof honour and decency as a mere triviality that a great man maydispense with if he wishes.

Such were the men, all able, most of them unscrupulous,all-powerful and most of them ambitious, who surrounded JamesStewart and kept in touch with William of Orange in 1687-1688.

PREPARATION FOR REVOLUTION

BY the beginning of 1688, William had tacitly agreed with hisEnglish friends that he would, if necessary, interfere with Englishaffairs backed by sufficient power of ships and men to preventanother failure like that of Monmouth.

There was a quarrel between James and William on the subject ofthe British regiments in the pay of the United Provinces, whichLouis XIV eagerly fomented. The Bourbon was intriguing for thepossession of Cologne, which alarmed the Dutch with memories of1672, and he financed James with half a million livres forthe equipment of a fleet with which to menace Holland from thesea.

These continued aggressions on the part of Louis and thiscompliance on the part of James drove William to take what musthave seemed to him a course so difficult as to be almost desperate.Had he not had proof after proof of the intentions of Louis tooverwhelm Europe and of the way James would lean in a future war,it is doubtful if he would have ventured all on an armed invasionof England. His audacity equalled his prudence when he told EdwardRussell (May, 1688) that he would land in England if he wereinvited by prominent men to do so.

The birth of the Prince of Wales, clumsily handled with sillytalk of a miracle, and the omission of Princess Anne,representative of Mary's claims, and her own from the Queen'sbedside, were like a spark to tinder. Mary of Modena had neverborne a child who had survived, and this very opportune arrival ofa healthy male heir was too much for Protestant patience; theyrefused to credit what they did not wish to believe.

The story was instantly spread that the child was the son of awasherwoman, one Mary Grey, who had been slipped into the Queen'sbed in a warming-pan. This was a subject much to the taste of thelampoonists, caricaturists, and pamphleteers and in the hands ofthe astute enemies of James, a very powerful weapon against him,providing coarse gibes at his personal honour as well as at hispolitical morality.

How many people really believed this tale, it is now impossibleto tell; it was probably swallowed by the ignorant and even by someof the more intelligent. The unhappy child was well known all hislife to his opponents as the Pretender—i.e. the pretended Princeof Wales, even when, as Mary of Scotland said of her son, eventsproved him "too much his father's child."

Admiral Herbert, dismissed the service of James II, smuggled aletter to William of Orange on June 30th, the day that the Bishopswere acquitted. Herbert was disguised as a "tarpaulin" or "tar" andthe letter that he carried was the guarantee that William haddemanded—a formal invitation signed by Devonshire, Danby, Lumley,Compton, Bishop of London, Edward Russell, and Henry Sydney. Thesegentlemen added to their invitation a protest against William'srecognition of the warming-pan impostor, upon which prayers for theinfant were stopped at the Prince's private chapel at theHague.

Whether William was convinced that the child's appearance was apiece of impudent trickery or no, there is nothing to show. Heaffected to believe it and he accepted the suggestion of hisEnglish friends that he should make this supposititious heir hisexcuse for invading England to maintain his wife's rights. By doingthis William took an irreparable step, for he must have realisedthat James would never forgive his action. There was certainlynothing in the character of James, private or public, to make himexempt from suspicion—for instance, his behaviour to Anne Hydeshowed a very low, dishonest cunning, and his promise on hisaccession was a deliberate lie—and both he and the Queen weresurrounded by Jesuits, who, rightly or wrongly, had a world-widereputation for intrigue and crafty double-dealing.

Whatever might have been the private opinion of William abouthis uncle's child, no one can read the memoirs of the Princess ofOrange without being convinced that she at least was agonisinglycertain that her father was trying to cheat her out of herbirthright by a despicable and insolent imposture.

MARY STEWART

AT this juncture the character of William's wife becomes ofimportance. She was at least the figurehead of the Protestants in1688, for it was ostensibly to protect her interests that theyresolved on action, and she could at several points have completelyupset the gigantic plans of her imperious, bold, and waryhusband.

Since she had left Whitehall in 1678 the English girl had liveda life that most of her fellow-countrywomen of rank would haveconsidered intolerably dull. The little Court at the Hague wasdecorous, quiet, with a minimum of modest state and a minimum ofmodest excitement.

Mary had no allowance from England and her means andopportunities for pleasure were alike restricted. The atmosphere inwhich she moved was one of sedate respectability and the religionthat most formed the spirit of the people was an austere Calvinismthat frowned upon everything likely to please and divert a girlfrom the Whitehall of Charles II.

Mary Stewart, however, had been happy during those ten years ofpeace and seclusion—"happier than I knew" she wrote afterwards ina passion of nostalgia. She had two good reasons for herfelicity—her situation suited her character and she wasecstatically in love with her husband.

Unambitious, domesticated, always in a low state of health,often actually suffering, narrowly and sincerely religious,good-natured, good-humoured, indolent and easy-going, the Princessof Orange enjoyed the placid comfort of her husband's handsome andstately houses, the orderly routine of her eventless life. Sheliked her flowers, her music, her needlework, her friends, thepleasant formalities of her little Court.

From the moment of her arrival at the Hague, the wilful,hysterical girl had changed into the contented, modest, pious,well-intentioned woman who fitted, like hand into glove, into Dutchways.

The charming placidity of her life was disturbed by a great joyand a great sorrow, both of which shook her to her soul. Theoutpourings she left behind, writings that were not meant for anyto see and that she intended to destroy, leave no doubt about thepoignant quality of her love for her husband. All she possessed ofpassion, tenderness, loyalty, and enthusiasm was lavished on theman whom she had so unwillingly married. She accepted him and allhe stood for with unquestioning fervour, to her he was "TheProtestant Hero" with la cause commune under his charge, andshe believed in him and admired him with a touching singleness ofmind. Her great grief was her childlessness, an ugly blot indeed onher personal happiness, her relations with her husband, and herdynastic importance.

Her intimate diaries show how this bitter misfortune preyed onher mind, gnawed at her nerves and sent her into almost hystericalardours of resignation and submission to the dismal God in whom shebelieved and whom she endeavoured to propitiate with endlesssermon-listening, prayers, and reading of gloomy and pioustomes.

She was not very intelligent, she was almost wholly uneducated,and her nature, made for simple gaiety and homely pleasures, wastormented and warped by bigotry, but she was, in her sincerity,courage, fidelity and sweetness, an admirable woman.

In person she was tall, majestic, inclined, even at twenty-six,to stoutness, with a gentle, melancholy expression in her fine,dark, weak eyes.

She has never received much attention from the romancists, butthere is more of genuine interest, sentiment, and passion in herstory than in that of any of the tawdry heroines of her uncle'sCourt, whose shoddy intrigues have been so often raked over forre-telling.

It was with considerable alarm and misgiving that the Princessof Orange grasped the significance of the English crisis and herhusband's resolve to interfere in it. She sincerely detested thethought of acting against her father, and was fully conscious ofthe odium her unfilial behaviour would provoke. But her religionand her love were powerfully on the other side and she did nothesitate a second in giving her husband her complete allegiance.She had no cause to love her father, who had never shown her anyaffection, never paid her jointure, and who had tried by underhandways to wreck her marital happiness, and even to procure a divorcebetween her and her husband, with some scheme of marrying her tothe Dauphin.

All that is clear about this obscure affair is that James wasemploying agents in his daughter's household to make mischief onthe subject of Elizabeth Villiers, who was reputed by the gossipsto be William's mistress. This has never been proved, but scandalseethed in the austere little Court and but for William's sharpdismissal of the talebearers and Mary's complete acquiescence inhis action, there might have been an open rupture that would haveprevented the close union of husband and wife, so essential in1688.

The Prince of Orange had told Temple when he was looking for awife that as he was likely enough to have trouble abroad all hislife he could not endure it at home, and at this crisis of hisaffairs he found indeed what he had wished—a woman who, far frommaking trouble, warmly forwarded his slightest wish, and who wrotein her diary: "God pardon me this love if it be idolatry," and "IfI cannot have a child by this man, I would not have one by anangel."

There was much of honour in Mary's steadfast loyalty to her Godand her love, and an artless sincerity, that has something ofidealism, in her motives and her conduct.

THE REVOLUTION

THUS supported by the unswerving devotion of his wife, Williamof Orange made his preparations with tact and completeself-control. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that he made nomistakes and his opponents made nothing but mistakes.

In spite of Republican and French influence in the UnitedProvinces, he obtained the consent of the States General to hisenterprise. In spite of the religion of James, he obtained thetacit consent of the Emperor, the King of Spain, and the Pope; theywould, in their fear of Louis XIV, at least "look through theirfingers" at the curbing or dethroning of James.

Louis XIV, with his eye on the Spanish succession and aconsequent war with the Emperor, who was then facing a Turkishattack on Belgrade, blundered badly in neglecting English affairswhile he endeavoured to strengthen his frontiers on the Rhine, wasstupid in prolonging his quarrel with Innocent XI, by forcing hisown nominee, Cardinal Furstenberg, into Cologne, and byexasperating the Dutch with his refusal to reduce the severecustoms on their goods.

By September, Louis had insulted the Pope by seizing Avignon,and relieved William of the fear of a possible invasion of theUnited Provinces by sending his troops into Germany.

When James, who had haughtily refused French help and warnings,and who was busily preparing a packed Parliament, was at lastroused to his danger, he stationed the Navy under Dartmouth atChatham, called up the local garrisons to London, brought Scotchand Irish regiments to England, thus mustering 46,000 troops. Thealarmed King also made concessions, restoring the charters toLondon and other cities and putting dismissed malcontents back intheir places; he even reinstated the expelled Fellows ofMagdalen.

No one was impressed by these actions, which were put downrather to panic than to good faith. Nor did he have any bettersuccess in Holland where he declared his willingness to uphold theTreaty of Nijmegen and to join with the Dutch against the French.This merely offended Louis without winning the Dutch, who suspecteda trick.

William of Orange, long delayed by "Papist," i.e. west winds,sailed from Helvoetsluis on October 19th. This news reduced Jamesto the degrading step of proving before the Privy Council that thePrince of Wales was indeed his son, an action over which even hisown daughter, Anne, "made very merry."

A sudden gale sent William's ships back to port, but with fewlosses, and he sailed again on November 1st, and made forYorkshire, where Lord Danby was awaiting him. It was necessary,however, to avoid Dartmouth as he lay off Harwich, and favoured bychanges of wind, William veered to the west, and avoiding theEnglish Fleet which followed in pursuit, gained Torbay, where thesplendid fleet anchored, after the pilot had nearly missed theentry to the bay.

So hazardous was this enterprise, so easily might the EnglishFleet have forced an action on the Dutch—and a victory would havebeen as fatal to William as a defeat—by such a mere chance was itsuccessful, and the disaster for himself and his country would havebeen complete had it failed, that some naval experts haveconsidered that William scarcely realised what he was risking andhow little hope he had of success. This can hardly be accepted; itseems more reasonable to suppose that William's intense earnestnessof purpose, his long and deeply cherished hopes and schemes joinedto his utter fearlessness, gave him that audacity which might betermed foolhardiness were it not backed by every possibleprecaution and care. The spirit that directed the fleet in 1688 wasthe spirit that had defied the French in 1672—a kind of fatalismthat comes from exaltation of spirit—as Buckingham wrote from thecamp at Utrecht, "the Prince was lifted up."

William of Orange was not received with enthusiasm in England;the people of the West, remembering Jeffreys, were apathetic orafraid, they watched curiously while his magnificent army of Dutchand mercenaries floundered over the rough, broken roads, but madeno effort to rally to the standard on which was inscribed: "I willmaintain the Protestant religion and the liberties of England," andthat was adorned with the billets and Lion of Nassau.

When the invading Prince made his headquarters at Exeter andattended the service in the Cathedral, the Dean and Chapter leftthe building, and Burnet, who had accompanied the expedition, hadto preach the sermon. William was deeply disappointed, but,"stately, serious, and reserved" as Evelyn noted him, kept histemper and bided his chance.

James vacillated miserably; he was elderly, in poor health,bewildered, harassed—the touchstone of a crisis showed his totallack of ability, and even of common sense. He gathered his troopsat Salisbury to check William's advance, but by the time that hehad made up his mind to join them, the gentlemen of the West andseveral nobles, Delamere, Cornbury, Seymour, were joining William,and Danby had seized York. Thus strengthened, the Princeadvanced.

James had appointed a Frenchman, Louis de Duras, Earl ofFaversham, a nephew of Turenne and the unpopular victor ofSedgemoor, his commander-in-chief, and refused even at thisjuncture to call a Parliament. This caused profound discontentamong his officers, and the night of November 24th, Churchill andthe Duke of Grafton, Charles II's rakehelly son, went over toWilliam's headquarters.

This treacherous desertion completed James's abject confusion ofmind; he returned to London to learn that his daughter Anne, herhusband, and the Bishop of London had also forsaken him. From theNavy and from the provinces came tales of disaffection, and theforlorn King hastily called a meeting of fifty Peers, who in harshterms demanded concessions that merely frightened him into a deeperterror.

With native duplicity, however, he feigned acceptance of theirdistasteful advice and appointed Halifax, Nottingham, and Godolphinto treat with William. This, however, as he confided to Louis'sAmbassador, Barillon, was a mere trick to gain time.

James had no intention of coming to terms with William, and,with his usual recklessness, thought nothing of the offence he wasgiving three of his most powerful nobles. While the threecommissioners were on their fool's errand the King smuggled hiswife and son out of the kingdom and prepared to follow them.

Stealing out of Whitehall at night he fled to Faversham andboarded a vessel bound for France. When Halifax and his colleaguesreturned to Whitehall with lenient and reasonable terms fromWilliam, they found the country without a government, the Kingfled, a letter sent to Faversham disbanding the army, and the mob(the word from "mobile" was just in fashion), encouraged by theusual political agitators and rejoicing in the suspension of lawand order, attacking the houses of Roman Catholics (December 11thand 12th).

The vagrant humours of the rioters were lashed to fury bypersistent tales (perhaps spread by the Protestants) that the "wildIrish" brought over by James were advancing on London andmassacring all in their way, and by the exciting chases afterpriests and "Jesuits," who were trying to escape in disguise.

Among those captured was a prize in the person of Lord Jeffreys,who had to be sent to the Tower to save him from being "de witted,"as the cant phrase ran.

Seeing the capital bordering on anarchy, the Peers asked Williamto come to London and restore order. An invitation, which thePrince found far more gratifying, came from the City of London; hewas changing all his plans to accede to this appeal, which heregarded as of deep importance, when the course of events wasaltered by the re-appearance of James on the scene. Captured atSheerness in mistake for a Jesuit, he was released by the Peers andreturned to London (December 15th) where he was received with anodd display of loyalty and affection from the excited and ficklepeople.

William, however, now sure of himself and relying on the supportof the City, refused to treat with the man who had tricked himonce, and behaved with a sudden harshness that was, under thecirc*mstances, daring, deliberately incurring odium, which he hadhitherto wished to avoid. But he acted on his discovery of James'scowardice and untrustworthiness.

The Prince arrested Faversham, sent by James to ask aninterview, on the excuse that he had illegally disbanded the army,and sent Halifax with two other Lords to the King, ordering him toquit London for Ham, near Petersham, Surrey.

The famous Dutch, or Blue Guards, under the Graf von Solms,displaced the veteran Lord Craven and his men at the palace, andJames submitted with incredible meekness to the incredible insult.Refusing Ham as too damp, he said he would go to Rochester and leftLondon on December 17th. The same day William of Orange entered thecapital, incurring some unpopularity by going to St. James's Palaceby a route that avoided the shouting crowds whom he so utterlydespised, and who were waiting to welcome him with oranges onsticks. It is to be supposed that they were not the same people asthose who lit the bonfires for James a few days ago.

Even then James might have maintained a party, and though hemight not have been able to secure much for himself, he could havemade the situation difficult, if not impossible, for William.

Clarendon, his brother-in-law, and others tried in vain todissuade him from the obvious folly of flight, but James wasfinished as a King and as a man. He found no courage either in thefanaticism of his Jesuits, or in the superstition of the divineright of Kings, and escaping from the gates William had carefullyleft unguarded, left Rochester Castle on December 23rd, and takinga vessel in the Thames, sailed to France, reaching Ambleteuse onChristmas Day.

This situation did not find William of Orange at a loss. Hedefied France immediately by ordering Barillon to leave the kingdomin forty-eight hours—an action that must have given him keenpersonal satisfaction—and he convened the magistrates and CommonCouncillors of London and all the members of Charles II's Commonsto meet on December 26th. James's Parliament was ignored on thegrounds of corruption.

This curious body, the Convention, gravely accepted its task,that of giving a semblance of law and order to a state of affairsreally dangerous and unstable, and invited William to administerthe country and to issue writs for a Parliament, i.e., somegathering representative of public opinion.

William showed himself prudent and skilful in conducting thisdifficult affair, both in preventing disorders in England and inconducting international affairs. In the delicate matter ofsoothing the jealous pride of the English Army, William was ablyseconded by the tact and skill of Churchill and by the influence ofGrafton, also by the discreet conduct of the Dutch and mercenarytroops, against whose behaviour, under trying circ*mstances, nocomplaint was heard.

The invader's aloof attitude during the election impressed apeople used to all methods of corruption, and the Convention, whenit met, could fairly be said to have been elected freely by thepeople without any kind of pressure or bribery.

Indeed, so easy and comfortable was the Convention with anexpert running the country for them that it split into factions,who took up with zest party differences and local squabbles.

The Whigs were exultant and in the majority, the Tories dividedand in the minority. Vexatious general questions such as the divineright of Kings, the position of the Church, how far James hadabdicated by his flight, whether the "warming-pan" baby should beacknowledged were mixed up with the personal questions thatinfluenced each member and coloured by the failure of one set ofopinions and the triumph of another.

The leading mind seems to have been that of Halifax, who hadbeen moved in William's favour on a closer acquaintance with him,and who was disgusted with the behaviour of James and personallyirked by the mock embassy of Hungerford.

A Regency was suggested—then, that it should be assumed thatthe throne was vacant—then, that Mary should be Queen, William,though a grandson of Charles I, stood after his wife and her sisterAnne with regard to the Crown of England. The party for thePrincess of Orange, headed by Danby, fell to pieces, however, on anindignant letter from Mary in which she refused to put forward anyclaims against those of her husband.

Anne, influenced by the Churchills, who were playing a waitinggame, also waived her rights, which she would have had muchdifficulty in enforcing. The Lords clung to the principle ofhereditary right, the Commons to that of the people's power ofelection.

While matters were at this deadlock, brought about not only bywarring interests, but by a sincere attempt to reconcile expediencywith tradition, William, impatient under an outward serenity (hehad been three months in England waiting on events), calledtogether a few Peers and told them his mind. He was, as he oncesaid of himself, "a plain man who did not like whipped cream" andhis remarks were extremely to the point. He would neither be aRegent nor a Prince Consort, "holding the throne by anapron-string"; the English had an absolute right to elect theirKing—if he were not chosen he would return to Holland, where hisown country needed him.

This put the Parliament in a dilemma—they did not know "what todo with the Prince or what to do without him." He alone wasadministering the country, and it must have been patent to all thathe was doing it with great ability, dignity, and self-control. Hiswithdrawal with his orderly, well-trained troops would mean chaosand trouble at least with the Dissenters, moderate men, and theCity. James, having defaulted and taken his heir out of thecountry, even the most extreme Tories were without a candidate.

Scruples and differences were sunk, if not for the public good,at least because the sound sense of Parliament saw that asettlement was necessary.

On February 12th, the Princess of Orange arrived in the Thames;her first private meeting with her husband provoked bitter tears oneach side—hysteria lay close under the surface of William'shaughty calm and Mary's pious gaiety. On the next day the Crown ofEngland was offered by Halifax as Speaker of the House of Lords toWilliam and his wife in the banqueting-room at Whitehall, and theywere immediately proclaimed in London as William III and Mary II,the Princess having been elected Queen regnant—i.e., as jointsovereign with her husband, though the administration was to restwith the King.

"I saw Marc Antony offer him a crown—and yet it was not a crowneither." Certainly, the crown that William received was not thatwhich James had cast away or that which he, autocratic as any ofthe Stewarts, would have liked to wear. Parliament, in a piousdesire to "secure our religion, laws, and liberties," had tacked "adeclaration of right" to the magnificent gift. In other words, thevictors—the powerful, wealthy, middle- and upper-classes—in thestruggle imposed terms on the loser—the King—any King. It wasironic that William "The Deliverer" should be penalised for thesins of the man whom he had driven away, but Parliament wasthinking of the future, and the fact that constitutional monarchyhas endured so long with no notable upheavals seems to prove thatthey acted wisely, though there are many who passionately deplorethe re-arrangement of 1689 as being the end of all that was fineand desirable in English government—a disaster and a disgrace,where the new money-made class overturned the ancient nobility andthe true King for purely selfish motives.

Most of the provisos of the Declaration of Rights had a basis ofcommon sense; the King was not to levy taxes, to suspend the laws,to keep an army in time of peace, to exercise the dispensing power,while Parliaments were to be held frequently. Such was the firstrough draft of the terms that William, no doubt with inner chagrin,accepted. They were afterwards expanded and confirmed in the Billof Rights, December 16th, 1689, Triennial Bill, December 22nd,1694, Act of Settlement, June 12th, 1701. Further importantmeasures, which curbed the power of the Crown, were the Mutiny Bill(1689) which prevented the keeping of troops without the annualassent of Parliament, and the new East India Act, which transferredthe granting of trade monopolies from the Crown to the people,i.e., the traders and the wealthy class.

RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION

MOST of the men concerned in bringing about the Revolution foundtheir count in it; honours, titles, appointments, opportunities,were lavished on all the politicians who had manoeuvred James outand William in, Roman Catholics were penalised, Dissenters left ina comfortable obscurity, Jacobites abandoned to the combining offorlorn hopes in exile, Scotland was brought into the EnglishSettlement, much against the will of a minority; Ireland, after apitiful resistance, was subdued for another hundred years; theChurch of England, the Protestant upper classes, the City, thetraders, the shopkeepers, all were more or less satisfied with anarrangement that left them with a feeling of security against thoseancient bugbears, a monarch playing at absolutism, unexpectedtaxation, a large standing army, the French and the Pope, and thathad secured them the power of making money without fear of themonarch's avarice or stupidity.

No doubt the daily life and prosperity of the mass of the peoplewere not very different under William from what they had been underJames or Charles, and there were very many who were ruined by thechange of kings, but there does seem to have been a general feelingof satisfaction at the exit of the Stewarts and the Papists and theclipping of regal powers.

Louis XIV, having inevitably but disastrously espoused the lostcause of James II, England was involved in two long wars withFrance (1689—Treaty of Ryswyck, 1697, Treaty of Utrecht, 1713),but even these, expensive as they were, were not wholly unpopular,raising the national prestige against an hereditary foe as theydid, and giving so many people the opportunity of making money andacquiring fame.

Less spectacular than the showy, bloody campaigns in Flanders,but as important even as the later victories of Marlborough, werethe English command of the Channel and gradual naval supremacy,emphasised by a gratifying victory over the gorgeous ships ofFrance at La Hogue (March 19th, 1692), the outcome of William III'sbelief that England must, to hold her own in Europe, be a maritimepower.

The foundation of the Bank of England and the formation of theNational Debt immensely helped the wealth and reputation ofEngland, and the scheme whereby the people, instead of beingarbitrarily taxed, were paid interest on money lent to thegovernment, proved exceedingly popular.

The national comfort was added to by the re-coinage (1696), abetter maintenance of law and order, a more general, though veryimperfect, toleration of various Christian opinions, and by lessopen jobbery, bribery, and corruption. However amusing the openCourt held by the Stewarts may have been to Londoners, many of whommade handsome incomes out of it, the decorum of William and thevirtue of Mary were more to the liking of the country as a wholeand the majority of the people did feel easier when the loose womanand the pimp, the jobber and the harpy, had fled with the King andthe Jesuits across the water.

A substantial benefit, directly due to William III but not putinto practice until after his death, was the Union withScotland.

In brief, the Settlement of 1689, the results of the newconstitution and of the domestic and foreign policy of William III(advisers he scarcely had, even at home, and he was always his ownforeign minister), together with the growing wealth, trade, andpower of the people, partly due to colonial expansion, laid thefoundations of the British Empire, British might, prestige, anddominion, which reached their apogee two hundred years later in thereign of Victoria.

THE KING STADTHOLDER

WILLIAM OF ORANGE, the man who had risked most and strivenhardest in the crisis of 1688, received his reward, thegratification of combining a huge coalition with England againstLouis XIV. "He has such a mind to France," noted Halifax, "that onewould think he had only taken England in the way."

On the whole, his newly-acquired kingdom stood by him, votinghim more money than had ever been granted to the Stewarts, andfollowing his foreign policy, so that on his death-bed he had thesatisfaction of knowing that his work would be carried on, thoughanother would reap that glory and those rewards for which he hadcared very little. William III and Marlborough had differentconceptions of success and each in a measure achieved that which hehad so early set out to obtain.

William's achievement in arming England against his own bitterfoe was not, however, without a price, which he at times foundalmost intolerable. Twice the factions, ingratitude, suspicion, andrudeness of the English Commons broke his constancy, which soimpressed and exasperated his new subjects, to the point ofresignation of the Crown, and in the forced revocation of the Irishgrants and in the dismissal of the Dutch Guards the King tasted thebitterest humiliation.

Much has been made of his unpopularity—even his admirers haveheightened this for the sake of dramatic effect. It is supposed tohave rested on his reserve, the removal of the Court fromWhitehall, foreign favourites, and his anxiety to escape fromEngland. All this has probably been exaggerated—the lack of aCourt, for instance, could have vexed only a few people in thecapital, and if some enjoyed the antics of the demireps whogathered about the Stewarts, there were plenty of another temperwho were ready to admire respectability—Queen Mary made goodnessfashionable and undoubtedly pleased a great number of people. Thewhole feeling of the country was for stability, law, and order.

Nor is William's quiet life likely to have offended any savethose hangers-on of royal extravagances who were losers by it; theconstantly repeated anecdotes of his brusque dryness or rudenessseem to derive from Burnet, snubbed by William, who disliked him asa busybody, and from the silly slanders of the vulgar duch*ess ofMarlborough.

There is abundant, though seldom quoted, evidence to the effectthat William III was of fine manners on both public and privateoccasions—one of the most striking witnesses to this is M.Tallard, Louis XIV's envoy, who came to England full of prejudiceagainst William, who was his opponent throughout their intercourse,and who was reporting to Louis XIV William's speeches to hisParliament and his behaviour during his campaigns—for instance,Dr. Hutton's account of the King's conduct in Ireland shows thatboth William's courtesy and his temper were equal to a veryconsiderable strain. Most probably it might be said of William asDr. Johnson, Jacobite as he was, said of George III, "Sir, I takehim to be as fine a gentleman as one may suppose Louis XIV orCharles II to have been." The Spencer house journals, Halifax'scareful notes of his conversations with the King, which had notbeen discovered when Lord Macaulay wrote his famous account ofWilliam III, prove that William was largely his own minister duringthe short period that Halifax was nominally in office, 1689-1690.They also show that William was by no means reserved or evenserene, save in public. He expressed himself vehemently to Halifax,who observed him with a shrewd detached admiration.

"The Commons," the King declared, "had used him like a dog" and"their coarse usage so boiled upon his stomach that he had to breakout." He declared passionately that he had not come over toestablish a republic, and that he would not be King Log. Hisexpressions about his wife's uncles, Hyde and Clarendon, shockedHalifax, who was besides astonished at the King's thirst for actionagainst the French.

When, in June, 1689, William exclaimed: "We shall never be quietuntil we have a brush for it!" the philosophic Englishman noted:"Great men love to come to a decision as soon as they can, couragebeing apt to presume on good fortune."

In these conversations with the only English minister that wasever absolutely faithful to him, the King repeated so often that hewas a "Trimmer" that even Halifax remarked that a good reason mightbe destroyed by too much pressing upon it.

There was no special grievance against William for hisemployment of foreigners; men like Bentinck, Ginkel, Solms, andOberkirk, were of complete integrity, and obviously worth what thenation paid them, nor did they interfere with the privileges of thenatives.

A search through the lists of William's household shows that hehad very few Dutch in his English establishments. A fuss was madeover the Irish grants, which were as nothing compared to the giftsof the Stewarts to their favourites. Ginkel, at least, quitedeserved the reward so ungraciously revoked. William was certainlynot regarded with enthusiasm by the English, he was essentiallymoderate and tolerant, and thereby disappointed all, but it seemsclear that he was respected and even admired by the bulk of thenation, who, however the intrigues at Whitehall might veer, had nodesire for a return of the Stewarts. After some delays theParliament voted £600,000 of the £686,000 demanded by the StatesGeneral for the expedition of 1688. The Commons were, at least,willing to pay cash for 1688.

In the army William was very popular, and he became a hero and asymbol to the Protestants and Scotland and Ireland; after the fallof Namur, 1695, after the Assassination Plot, 1696, the recognitionof James III by Louis XIV, 1700, he was a hero and a symbol even toEngland.

On the whole, he suited the event, the period, the trend ofthought, very well; to a vast number of plain people he was whatMatthew Prior, laughing at the vanity of Louis and the flattery ofBoileau, named him—a sensible, businesslike person with anadmirable courage, even for those warlike times.

The King's side of the question was not so pleasant; hisposition was profoundly difficult, and he was in exile from acountry passionately beloved: "It is Kermesse at the Hague," hetold Huggens, his secretary, one May morning, "Oh, for the wings ofa bird to be there!"

His health failed rapidly from his coming to England, and he wasvexed to the heart by what seemed to him petty party squabbles,which hindered a great design. He found it maddeningly difficult tofind anyone trustworthy to serve him: "There are honest men inEngland, but they are not among my friends," he remarked.

He was surrounded by jobbers, place-seekers, traitors, men witha foot in each camp, time-servers waiting for him to die,indifferent opportunists.

The honest Halifax went into opposition, the honest Temple intoretirement, clever rogues like Sunderland, intelligent, upright menlike Carstairs and Patterson had to be consulted in secret, loftycharacters like John Locke refused office, valuable public servantslike Sir John Dalrymple were lost through local scandals arisingfrom family quarrels.

The King's one loyal minister was the Queen; her correspondencewith him when she was governing during his absences reveals a stateof domestic affairs so desperate as to be almost incredible.Indeed, in this reign, which appears in retrospect so orderly andestablished, it was often touch and go that another revolution didnot bring James back or establish a republic.

William himself doubted if it could be done, Mary was indespair; plots, treachery, threat of invasion, mutiny, revolt, theghastly problems of Ireland and Scotland, the insubordination ofAnne and her bear-leaders, the Marl-boroughs, combined to make thepost-revolution period one of almost chaotic excitement andalarm.

However he might be regarded in England, William's exploitdazzled at a distance, his prestige rose greatly in Europe. InFrance he was a monster, but one of almost legendary powers. Even aman of the lofty intelligence of La Bruyère could write of him as"cet homme pâle et livide" who had driven his father and mother(sic) into exile and overturned a whole country to gratify ademoniac ambition. This long diatribe against the enemy of Franceincludes the tale that William had in infancy bitten his nurse todeath.

Yet all this malice was based on admiration, and to the FrenchWilliam appeared a greater man than he did to the English, whotook—so absorbed were they in their own affairs—very much forgranted the expedition that astounded Europe.

Thus, extravagantly maligned and hated by some, extravagantlylauded by others, misunderstood by many, by others merelytolerated, amid a turmoil of stress of business, politics and war,with neither rest nor pleasure did William III, constant to his ownideals, pass the thirteen years of his reign. He had accepted the"great mind's great bribe," the chance of carrying a large,difficult, and dangerous enterprise, and probably, even in theyears of his deepest disgust and suffering, he was glad that he hadnot refused the dazzling opportunity that had come his way in1688.

Historians have frequently blamed him because he never became a"true-born Englishman" and always retained a passionate affectionfor his own country. It would have been difficult for a man ofthirty-eight, peculiarly patriotic, and extremely national in histaste, to have suddenly become so enthusiastic for another countryas to be able to convince the natives that he was one ofthemselves.

If his lack of identification with his mother's people wasresented by the English, he on his side found much to condemn, fromthe dirt of Whitehall to the running of the public services inEngland.

The Netherlands were then in much ahead of Europe, and Englandbenefited by the Dutch tastes, crafts, and inventions, whichthrough William's encouragement were introduced. What was moreimportant than whether he liked the English or whether they likedhim was that even his enemies admitted that never did he betrayEnglish interests or set them second to those of his owncountry.

The Princess of Orange reigned five years, during which time shewas profoundly agitated, uneasy, and unhappy. She disliked herposition, she was wretchedly homesick for Holland, she wastormented by the constant absences of her husband and the tumult ofaffairs. She felt very keenly the odium attaching to her occupationof her father's throne, and she was painfully sensitive to thetreachery, ill-will, and intrigue that surrounded her and herhusband.

These troubles and constant ill-health reduced her to such amorbid condition that she not only prepared herself to die, butalmost willed herself to do so. When at the head of affairs sheshowed good sense and courage and her brief rule was not marred byany ill-behaviour or ugly act.

It is easy to smile at her narrow bigotry, her gloomy piety, herintense belief in the righteousness of her cause, but her simple,untrained mind was faithful to the creed it had been taught—she"satisfied her God."

Her sudden death at the age of thirty-two years was dismal andpathetic in every detail from the moment she shut herself in hercloset to burn her papers to that when her husband, at the limit ofhis nerves and almost crazy with anguish, fled to Richmond fromKensington Palace to escape the sound of the hammering as the blackhangings were put in place.

The charge that Mary was neglected by her husband has been oftenrepeated. The sole authority seems to be Burnet, in Mary's own mostintimate writings there is not a shadow of complaint; none ofWilliam's letters to her survive.

Whether Elizabeth Villiers was his mistress or no will probablynever be discovered; whatever the affair, it was conducted withsecrecy and decorum, and Mary, at worst, might consider herselffortunate among the princesses of Europe in having only onerival.

William's behaviour at his wife's death shows that herpassionate affection was returned and it seems unfair to assumethat his agonies were remorse, or that, because we know so littleof his relations with his wife, these were, on his side, ungratefulor unkind.

Mary's blameless life and orthodox piety made her almost a saintamong Protestant divines, but her father refused to permit mourningto be worn for her and a Jacobite in his zeal preached on theoccasion of her death a sermon on the text: "Go bury her, for sheis a king's daughter."

THE EXILED KING

EXCEPT for a short period of discomfort in Ireland, King Jamespassed the remainder of his days easily enough. Louis XIV found himtiresome and costly, but treated him with lavish generosity,thereby laying up a burden for his descendants until the day whenLouis XV washed his hands of the heritage, saying of the Stewarts:"It is an unfortunate family of which I wish to hear no more."

James suffered much mental anguish, no doubt, but he wascontinually buoyed up with hopes of a return to his throne; he wassurrounded by adherents and flatterers, his circ*mstances wereluxurious, he had the praises of a devoted wife and the blessingsof priests to sustain him. If he was indeed sincerely pious he musthave been much gratified with the illusion that he had cast away anearthly for a heavenly crown. His last religious fits were notwithout a suspicion of senility—a weak mind finally overturned bybigotry, but there are those who find a mystical quality in hisrepentance and resignation.

A daughter, who became a nun, was born to him and Maria d'Estein exile, there never was any "warming-pan" tale about her arrival,a fact which goes far to remove any stigma from her brother'sbirth.

From the exile of James II may be dated the remarkable cultknown as the White Rose or Stewart "Romaunt." Sensitive andromantic people have seen something so affecting in the misfortunesof this Royal House that they have built up from one generation toanother, a loyalty, a veneration, an enthusiasm that often blendinto an obsession.

It was, for instance, recently asserted that the body of LordDerwentwater (executed 1716) was able to work miracles, and thatwhen alive he had the power to cure the King's Evil—this by virtueof his mother's being the bastard daughter of Charles II. A faithin the divine right of Kings, so touching and so steadfast, hasbeen able to invest the Stewarts with a cloud of tradition, legend,fiction and poetry, through which it is almost impossible todiscern the truth. Inspired by these admirable sentiments, theScots who had persistently murdered or thrown out the Stewarts whenthey ruled in their native country, twice rose to support theclaims of the son and grandson of James II.

They received a cold reward for their enthusiasm, for the vastbulk of the common sense of the nation was against them, andballadry and "glamour" apart, neither James nor the Chevalier deSaint George, nor his son, gave any signs of being a bettercandidate for kingship than any of their forebears who had sosignally failed in that difficult profession.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE REVOLUTION

JOHN LOCKE is named the apostle of common sense and of theRevolution of 1688. His two "Treatises of Civil Government" are theapologia of that settlement—the new contract between King andpeople implied in the Bill of Rights, just as "The Leviathan" ofHobbes was an apologia for absolute monarchy, though not formonarchy by Divine Right.

John Locke's argument, which has, on the whole, held good untilthe present day in this country, was that any monarchy must dependon an agreement between King and people, that an infringement ofthat agreement on the part of the sovereign returned the right offreedom in another choice of ruler to the people.

This is obviously only an abstraction, like the Divine Righttheory, since a contract is not necessarily implied in any form ofgovernment that may evolve from something that has no businessbasis. But it was a practical, sensible ideal, which sounded stableand convenient, and satisfied even liberal thinkers until the widemovement of a hundred years later, which began with the theories ofJ. J. Rousseau, to do away with kings altogether and to make thepeople rulers themselves, under the majestic but delusive plea"that man was born free."

This fallacy ended in excesses of insanity like the FrenchRevolution, and proved to be as unworkable as the Divine idea ofkingship—perhaps more so, since it is easier to invest some powerin one man than to divide it equally among millions, and it is nomore inconvenient to assume that God inspires the ruler than toassert that He is behind the mob.

It might, perhaps, with some reason, be argued that the limitedcontractual monarchy as achieved by the Bill of Rights and asexpounded by John Locke, was among the most workable, sanestschemes of government that practical men ever put together for theprotection of law and property and the safeguarding of thefinancial interests of a nation.

Whatever self-interest lay behind the movement, and whether theoligarchy of the wealthy trading classes that followed was a betterform of government than absolute monarchy or no, the orderly anddignified externals of the Revolution of 1688 could claim to beadorned with dicta of popular liberal patriotism, as expressed byAlgernon Sidney: "It is not upon the uncertain will andunderstanding of a Prince that the safety of a nation ought todepend...for this reason the Law is established which no passioncan disturb."

The fallacies of this statement are obvious; since an oligarchyor any representatives of the people or the people themselves arelikely also to be of "uncertain will and understanding." And who isso above fault as to be able to establish a law that shall beimpeccable and impregnable? But the men who brought about theRevolution of 1688 saw no flaws in such plausible statements as arenever wanting to gloss the opportunism of shrewd worldly men.

"Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow,
They who would seek for pearls must dive below."

3. THE ART OF FLATTERY

FLATTERY is, of course, a very vast subject and one cannot hopeto do more in this brief discussion than call attention to a fewaspects of flattery when it had ceased to be an instinct of fearand love mingled and become an art used for many devious ends.

As civilisation advanced, people began to discover that more wasto be gained by flattery than by force—and that flattery had alarger purchasing power than coin of the realm.

It has been used to sway individuals and to influence crowds, ithas generally been the keenest weapon in the armoury of the rogueand adventurer, and great men and saints have often not been ableto dispense with it.

Flattery has now vanished in most of the cruder forms, but isstill just as powerful in more subtle ways. Our manners are foundedon flattery and it is still one of the most powerful aids toworldly success.

Flattery is the secret of most modern advertisem*nt; thejudgment, taste, and acumen of any possible purchaser are skilfullyflattered—even by such frank, blunt statements as "you wantthe best," or "you mustn't miss this," and it still remainsmost valuable in oratory—oratory is in itself a kind of flattery,for you imply that your audience is valuable to you, in some wayimportant and worth the obvious effort you are making.

Flattery is so necessary to all of us that we flatter oneanother just to be flattered in return—there is a certainconvention of mutual flattery that is very dear to most of us.

Of course, flattery that is purely personal is only interestingto the recipient and those who have devoted themselves to flatteryof one person have generally incurred the coldness of everybodyelse; for this reason a great number of authors, poets and artistshave fallen into disrepute.

In the East flattery has always been the language of everyday,in ancient history we do not find so much of it, though we haveinstances enough that it was used, as in Marc Antony's speech overthe body of Julius Caesar in which he undoubtedly used flattery tomove the Roman people.

In early modern history there is also rather a dearth ofinstances of flattery, events marched too quickly and were settledwith sword or club before anyone had much chance of trying softermeans, and the only kind of flattery you find is the stupid sortpractised by courtiers towards their King.

The classic instance is King Canute and the waves, a ratherpuerile anecdote; one wonders how a monarch of such wisdom had suchfoolish followers—if they were merely paying the usual formalcompliment, it was extremely dull and priggish of Canute to takethem literally.

As times became less rude and as the arts developed, the powersand uses of flattery became manifold.

And here, in this development of the arts, one comes to a veryinteresting point—which is, the almost complete dedication ofthese same arts to flattery. Flattery, first, of the Church,secondly, of the King or +he patron.

Independence of thought or standpoint was impossible, literaturewas locked away, first, in the manuscripts of the monks, then, inthe strictly controlled infant press, painting was devoted entirelyto the Church and the patron; the same is true of architecture andof the rudimentary music of these times.

Art, therefore, particularly painting, architecture, and kindredarts and crafts, such as glass-painting, the goldsmith's craft,works in tapestry, enamels, developed along the lines of strictconvention, a formula of religious or secular flattery.

For this reason neither landscape nor genre-painting made anyappearance till a late date—or only as could be worked in asbackgrounds or accessories—and a really unfettered domestic artexpressive of the people themselves does not appear until, in theNetherlands in the seventeenth century there arose a country thathad thrown off the saint and the patron alike.

Consider how in these early pictures this double dominationshows—the centre of the composition is occupied by some DivinePersonage or some episode from the sacred story, interpretedrigidly according to the Byzantine model, and at each side areeither dignitaries of the particular Church that ordered thepicture or the donor and his wife. This convention endured forcenturies, and the only scope the painter had for his own fancy orobservation was in the backgrounds and details, as the deliciouslandscapes of the Van Eycks and Gerard David seen through thedelicate arches of their churches and palaces and their lovelyaccessories so tenderly copied from articles of everyday use—inthe Italian school, from Giotto to Perugini, it is the same;sometimes, as in the case of Fra Angelico, the convention exactlysuited the artist, the mystic piety of the painter found theperfect ready-made vehicle convenient to his hand, but in mostcases the painter worked mechanically without a spark of spiritualfeeling, taking his models from the types nearest, tending inFlanders and Germany to ugliness and vulgarity, and in Italy toinsipidness and monotony.

With the Renaissance came the classic inspiration and painterswere then permitted to treat mythological themes, but still alwayswith reference to a patron and very often with that patron as themodel for Mars or Apollo, and the patroness as Diana or Venus. Theilluminated manuscripts, and the goldsmiths' work, the architectureand statuary, are all subservient to these two masters, the Churchand the patron, nothing may be praised but one of these, nothingadorned save the altar or the tomb of the great, the reliquary ofthe dead saint or the chamber of the living noble.

Literature comes a little better off; as the patrons liked to beamused, tales, poems and novels of a more fanciful nature, of aless rigid convention, were permitted, but the field was verylimited and the incense had here, too, to be fairly strong; thefirst illustration to many an old manuscript or book is the authoron his knees humbly presenting the fruit of his labours to thegreat one of the moment, and the other illustrations will be foundalso for many hundreds of years to consist entirely of sacredsubjects, scenes from the lives of kings and patrons and theirportraits.

It must be confessed that these portraits were none of them inthemselves flattering, but that was due to the painter's lack ofskill, not of good will.

As Dryden said:

"Hard features every bungler can command,
To draw true beauty needs a master hand."

And nearly all these early portraits are dolefully plain andoften comic; Jan van Eyck, who must be considered one of theearliest portrait painters of any distinction, viewed his subjectswith a ferocious sincerity that brings them out repulsive to adegree, and yet with an air of being extremely good likenesses.

This convention of flattery was by no means out-worn when theart of painting rose to its height; Velasquez, Raphael,Michelangelo, Titian, were all subservient to masters, hampered andirritated by the need to flatter and please—the greatest of all,Leonardo da Vinci, spent his life in the service of petty Italiantyrants.

Velasquez, who is perhaps the most perfect technical painterthat ever lived, was in particular the victim of the patron system;his genius was on robust, material lines and his early works showthat he delighted in the common life of everyday; but the greaterpart of his life was spent in painting the members of the pompousand formal Spanish Court, infantas disguised in the brocade andwhalebone of a monstrous fashion with their curls suspended onsticks like rows of red-herrings, and rouge on their faces, necks,and hands.

Not only did Velasquez have to keep on painting Philip IV whenhe must have known that sombre face by heart, but even had to wastehis time colouring the royal scenery when Philip fancied amateurtheatricals; every artist in every age always has, with fewexceptions, the necessity of earning his living, but it is mucheasier to do this nowadays by expressing yourself without referenceto any patron than it ever has been before, and one wonders whatworks these men of such stupendous genius would have produced inthe free air of the twentieth century.

Philip IV was very appreciative of Velasquez and flattered himwhen shown the artist's portrait of himself by painting the crossof Santiago on the breast, thereby, no doubt, spoiling thepicture.

Rubens was, by interest, an arch-flatterer; it was easy also tohis opulent temperament to over-state, and he lived in an age whenflattery as a fine art was rising to its height; much of his finestwork is spoilt for the present day by this fault, notably thepaintings executed for the Luxemburg Palace by order of Marie deMedicis in honour of the husband she had never loved, Henri IV.

Some of them approach absurdity, as when Apollo and the Musesteach the little Marie de Medicis the arts (Apollo with a large'cello and the Muses most ill-drawn by some blundering pupil), andwhere Marie and Henri meet in the clouds as Juno and Jupiter. The"Apotheosis of James I" on the ceiling of the Banqueting Hall inWhitehall Palace has the same fleshy, clumsy spread of limb, thesame opulent colour—the hero seems to be rather hauled than raisedto the circle of the gods.

Some of Rubens's pupils, among them the renowned Jordaens,decorated the Oranje Zaal in the huis ten bosch at theHague, to the memory of the Stadtholder, Frederic Hendrik, whoruled during the Golden Age of Dutch history. Here is the samewealth of allegorical and classical allusion, which does not seemto have been displeasing even to austere patrons, and here, as inthe Luxemburg Rubens, the widow receives a large share of thehomage lavished on her husband.

Vandyck never lifted his brush but he flattered; by his timebeauty had become a convention of portrait-painting, seldom do wenow see the bungler's "hard features."

Charles I probably owes much of his popularity to Vandyck'senchanting portraits so full of fire and grace—if he had beenpainted by Van Eyck or Holbein posterity would not have been sointerested in him, yet even Holbein, according to legend, soflattered Anne of Cleves that Henry VIII married her on thestrength of the likeness, with the result that as soon as the Kingsaw the original the painter had to fly the country.

One would like to see what Vandyck would have made of QueenElizabeth, who, avid as she was of flattery, never got a chancewith her painters, who never represented her as anything but aplain woman and must have contented herself with the accuraterepresentation of her jewels and gowns.

The fascinating Mary Queen of Scots should have been painted byTitian; as it is, the best portrait of her is on the war medal atBreslau; indeed, accurate and pleasing likenesses are more oftenfound on old medals than in old pictures, possibly because theprofile is usually the most characteristic view of a face and lackof colour and light and shade makes the artist concentrate onmodelling.

It has always been a difficult task to flatter the great intotaking some course distasteful to themselves and a very easy one toflatter them along the lines of their own desires. Jean Goujon, thedelicious French artist, lived and flourished by flattering afrivolous and designing woman, Diane de Poitiers; when Goujoncarved her as Diana, lovely and severe, with braided fantastic hairand long limbs, she was neither young nor beautiful, and theflattery is forgotten in the form the artist gave it; Diana isimmortal as one of the children of that cold, ethereal, strangeFrench Renaissance, not as a portrait of Diane de Poitiers.

In another painting she is flattered by scriptural and classicalallusion at once, being shown as Diana with crescent and bow, andin the corner there is a scroll on which is painted the quotationHenri II had chosen from the then fashionable paraphrase of thepsalms by Clément Marot, valet de chambre to the pious andpoetical Marguerite de Navarre, Comme le cerf—etc., anallusion both to the King's love of the chase and to the symbolismof Diane's name.

This lady was also flattered by the introduction of her symboliccrescents into the design of that rare and exquisite Orion or HenriDeux ware, manufactured at the Château d'Orion by FrançoisCharpentier and Jehan Bernait under the direction of the Dame deBoisy; so a worthless favourite of fortune is commemorated, by thisdelicate flattery, on some of the most prized pieces of earthenwarein the world.

The Italians are not greatly addicted to flattery, theirlanguage of compliment is and was so universal that it ceases to bemore than a fashion; it could not be said that Petrarch flattersLaura, Boccaccio Fiammetta, or Dante Beatrice, though these ladiesare most certainly drawn on a heroic scale beyond the margin ofcommon life; Italian art, too, at least Italian poetry, isimpersonal; even when their customs were most luxurious, brutal,and violent, their writing retains that spiritual aloofness whichmakes it difficult to judge the characters of the writers and givesus no hint of the person addressed; Lorenzo de' Medici, in all hisgorgeous carnival songs and wild, beautiful "Selve d'Amore," nevermentions one lady by name.

In Italian painting there is the same divine alchemy; the modelsof Michelangelo and Raphael are not flattered but transformed;Leonardo da Vinci flattered "Beatrix d'Este" possibly in hisprecise painting of her pure profile, and "Mona Lisa" certainly; itis said that this lady, then no longer youthful, refused to let himpaint her faded face, but sent him a portrait done by an earlierpainter and from this he evolved his immortal picture.

Here we rather outstep the limits of flattery and come upon thetransmutation of the ordinary into the sublime by the touch ofgenius.

By the end of the seventeenth century, portrait-painting haddeclined into a convention of mere prettiness—Lely's ladies, forinstance, are so much the same that, like prize roses, they areonly known by their labels and only to be distinguished by anexpert; in the hands of Wissing and Kneller portraits became againfar from flattering, though the intention was one of grossadulation; the clumsy fashion of classic symbolism was now in fullforce and nothing can be more tiresome and ugly than those heroesin cuirass and buskins, laurel wreath and full-bottomed perukes,astride ill-drawn horses, attended by meaningless female figures inrobes; so universal was this form of flattery that it is quitedifficult to get any idea of the men of this period "in their habitas they lived."

Towards the end of the eighteenth century there was a charmingrevival in portrait painting, but here, both in England and France,the flattery is still obvious; Reynolds, Romney, Hoppner,Gainsborough, appear never to have had a plain model and their airof "fashion" is carried to excess by Lawrence who brings this phaseto an end in an excess of sweetness and softness—the exactopposite to the grim fidelity and stern hardness of Jan vanEyck.

Sir Joshua Reynolds paid a noble compliment to Mrs. Siddons whenhe signed his sumptuous portrait of her between the Tragic and theComic muse, placing his name on the edge of her robe, saying thatit was fit that he should go down to posterity on the hem of hergarment.

Turning to literature we find flattery equally powerful, thesame in politics and religion.

Taking merely such examples as come to memory there may becollected a fine medley of instances, of flatterers and flattered,giving little passing glimpses of many different periods, men andmoods, many different phases of art and manners and many kinds offlattery.

The most unlikely people have at some time of their lives usedone of these varieties of flattery; John Calvin, most austere andstern of reformers, who forbade slashed breeches and curled hair inGeneva under severe penalties, was not above this worldly weakness,though truly it was for the noble end of enlisting the Emperor asprotector of the Reformed and persecuted Church that he wrote hisfamous tract: Need of Reform in the Church, etc.; this"humble exhortation to the most invincible Emperor Charles V" wasnot successful, for Myconius, writing to Calvin, March 6th, 1545,remarks: "...if the Emperor has read it, the effect hath beencontrary to what you intended, so hotly doth he persecute thesaints in Belgium."

As a young man Calvin had endeavoured to flatter anothermonarch, the volatile François I, into becoming a convert to theReformed Church in the dedication to his Institutio, butalthough ranking with De Thou's foreword to his History andCasaubon's to Polybius, as one of the three most famousprefaces ever written, it was utterly unsuccessful in itsobject.

Another and nobler Churchman endeavoured to secure theconversion of another French King, the adventurous and irresoluteCharles VIII, but Savonarola can hardly be said to have flatteredCharles save in so far as it was flattery for such as the heroicsaint of Florence to appeal at all to a feeble worldling; rather heused the grand language of prophecy in conjuring the King to putthe Borgia from the Papal throne, and with such effect that, urgedby that fierce Della Rovere, afterwards the second Julius, theFrench guns pointed more than once at Sant' Angelo and the fate ofthe Pagan Pope was like to have been decided by the Florentinefriar; but Charles, like every other absolute monarch, saw his owninterest too clearly in the maintenance of the supremacy of Romeand Savonarola's noble appeal had eventually no more effect than+he colder efforts of John Calvin.

It was then and for long afterwards impossible for anyone to doanything without flattering the great—the only alternative foranyone who had any work to accomplish was to become an outcastpersecuted and homeless and to die in oblivion or at thestake—even the daring Martin Luther had his Maurice of Saxony, andSanta Teresa was reduced to flattering the Duke of Alva and thePrincess of Etoli.

The Emperor Charles V affected a great modesty and retired fromall the vanities of the world into a convent, but when the Duke ofBorja, who had himself renounced his rank and become the humblestof friars, visited the Emperor at Yuste, the ex-grandee fell on hisknees and remained so during the interview, the habit of flatterybeing more strongly engrained than the affectation of holysimplicity.

Charles's general, the ill-omened Duke of Alva, put up a statueto himself in the Netherlands which was, of course, promptly pulleddown the moment his back was turned, and the most curious piece offlattery that his much-flattered successor, Don Juan of Austria,ever received must have been when his guardian, Luis da Quixada, onthe occasion of a fire at his house rushed into the flames to savehim, ignoring his own child, not from greater affection, butbecause Don Juan was of royal birth.

Of this Quixada's family a contemporary chronicle said: "Itshould be written with a quill taken from the wing of the eaglethat circled over Alexander in his conquests"—a good specimen ofhigh-flown flattery.

In general it may be said that the flattery offered to monarchsin the past could hardly be of top crude a quality; even the bluntand coarse Henry VIII was flattered by his last wife intorescinding an order for her arrest; she had the wit to say that sheonly disputed with him in order that her ignorance might beenlightened and he was at once appeased; it is only fair to addthat the lady does appear to have had a genuine admiration for herredoubtable husband, whom she styled "a Leviathan of learning."

Queen Elizabeth was flattered, of course, in all manner of ways,but she who was praised by William Shakespeare needs no otherflattery; his lauds are like his subject, just and lofty; where hementions her directly, as in "Henry VIII," he does not lower thedignity of history, and where he mentions her indirectly in thefamous passage in "A Mid-summer Night's Dream" he does not gobeyond the homage of a courtier.

Edmund Spenser also flattered Queen Elizabeth, but more stifflyand in terms of high poetry; Gloriana is not a woman raised into aheroine, but a lay figure in a pageant, a red wig transformed into"golden wire."

Cromwell was praised finely in his noble ode by Andrew Marvell,who also took occasion to commend Charles I, which shows verytenderly in this place.

"Who nothing common did
Nor mean
Upon that memorable scene,
But with his keener eye
The axe's edge did try
And laid his comely head
Down,
As upon a bed."

The use of "common," "comely," and "memorable" is heresingularly happy—the whole poem indeed is one of the choicest inthe English tongue.

John Milton, Marvell's friend, never flattered in the ordinarysense, but he certainly exalted Satan in the same way as old mythsand sagas flattered humanity.

Michael Drayton flattered Henry V, but in a noble kind of way.Cromwell and Charles II were flattered by the same poets, Drydenand Waller.

Dryden's verses on Cromwell are far superior and seem to bewritten with more sincerity, though, judging from his temperament,it is not likely that this was so; but doubtless he suffered frompaucity of material when dealing with Charles.

The last stanza of "On the Death of the Lord Protector,"

"His ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest,
His name to future ages show
How strangely high endeavour may be blest
Where piety and valour jointly go."

—is, in its simplicity and truth, the finest of all Dryden'sflatteries save the epitaph on Lord Dundee, "Last and Best ofScots"—the whole credit of which is not due to him, as the linesare a translation from the Latin of Dr. Pitcairn.

Charles II, who probably saw through flattery better than mostkings, remarked to Waller that his verses on Cromwell were superiorto those on himself, but Waller had a new flattery ready andremarked that he always succeeded better in fiction than intruth.

Dryden was the author of the most lavish praises of the mostunworthy people; he loaded Charles and James and the unfortunatechild who was afterwards the Pretender with the most fulsomeadulation, and after the death of one and the exile of the othertwo, said, in another flattering address to Godfrey Kneller:

"Thou hadst thy Charles awhile,
And so had[st] I,
But pass we that unpleasing image by,"

which was signal ingratitude as Dryden had received greatbenefits from that King. Neither did Dryden disdain to flatter theworthless Lady Castlemaine when she encouraged his play.

"So great a soul, such sweetness joined in one
Could only spring from noble Grandison."

And his lines to the duch*ess of York are models of extravagantlaudation without the grace to redeem them that distinguishedearlier essays in this manner of courtliness as in Henry Wotton'slines to the daughter of James I, Elizabeth of Bohemia,beginning:

"Ye meaner beauties of the skies,
That poorly satisfy our eyes,
More by your number than your light
Ye common people of the skies
Where are ye when the moon shall rise?"

Dryden was indeed more fitted for satire, which he writes with arelish always absent from his praise, which was doubtlessundertaken reluctantly and performed half-savagely; most of hisprologues discover the bitterness of the ill-paid hack-writer.

His one-time rival, Settle, on whom he heaped some of the mostscathing abuse in the language, was said to keep a standard"Marriage ode" and "Elegy" with blanks for the names; he afterwardssank to the meanness of writing a flattering copy of verses to thefirst Lord Jeffreys, but not, to do him justice, before he had beenreduced to the necessity of working puppets at BartholomewFair.

Matthew Prior, brisk diplomat and deft versifier, exposed thefolly of the bombastic flattery of Boileau in his famous parody onthe ode "On the fall of Namur," which he wrote on the occasion ofthe recapture of that fort by the Allies in 1695.

"Must stocks and stones be taught to flatter?" he asks,then:

"Are not Boileau and Corneille paid
For panegyric writing?
They know how heroes may be made
Without the aid of fighting."

Laughing at Boileau who introduces Louis with all the attributesof Jove in the following lines:

"What frightful power
Advances, clothed in thunder
Against these trembling walls;
What clamour, what fire surrounds him?
It is Jupiter himself—or the Conqueror of Mons."

Prior exclaims:

"'Tis little Will, the scourge of France
No godhead, but the first of men!"

A rebuke to Boileau and a true stroke introducing his ownhero.

But Prior himself employed flattery gracefully, as in hisdedication to Lord Dorset when he praised that nobleman's fatherand his own early patron, who indeed deserved the gratitude of allmen of letters, then with a woeful heaviness when treating of hispatron, King William, for whom he had a real enthusiasm which,however, he does not appear to have been able to translate intowords.

Prior wrote several other verses to his hero, who, being thelast man to care for rhymes or praises, certainly never read them;all the laudatory verses addressed to this monarch, including thosewhich Jonathan Swift sent with his dedication of the works of hispatron, Sir William Temple, met with the same fate of neglect froma King who was too austere to be popular, and who remarked, wheninduced to touch for the King's Evil: "I wish you better health andmore sense." These were probably his sentiments towards the poets,but the services of Defoe in "A True-born Englishman," whichscarcely touched on flattery and was a severe blow to the enemiesof the King, earned William's friendship.

Prior reached the height of incense in his lines on the Duke ofOrmond's picture by Kneller:

"O Kneller, could thy shades and lights express
The perfect hero in that glorious dress,
Ages to come might Ormond's picture know,
And palms for thee beneath his laurels grow,
In spite of time thy work might ever shine
Nor Homer's colour last so long as thine."

This painter was himself a clumsy flatterer, his classicalpieces, as the great picture in Hampton Court of William III, aredismal examples of the art of flattery. Pope's lines on thispainting are surely satirical, but it is possible that the poetknew little about the matter.

Kneller was supposed to be inordinately fond of flattery; ananecdote is told to the effect that John Gay was once reading tohim a copy of complimentary verses of his own composition, whichwere so fulsome that the author feared every moment that thepainter would suspect a jest; but at the close Kneller smiledcomplacently and remarked:

"But you haf forgot one thing, Mr. Gay—when I was at Venice Ismell powder and I like de smell, would have been a great general,Mr. Gay, put dat in!"

It might be imagined that this was a sly laugh at Gay, did notthe actual poem contain a compliment to Kneller, not as a soldier,but as an engineer, and Pope, when relating how Jacob Tonsonobtained valuable pictures by gifts of venison and flattery said:"Neither could be too fat for Kneller."

The bombastic flattery of a whole nation to one man is thespectacle presented by the reign of Louis XIV; the art of adulationcertainly never rose to these heights before or since; it was akind of mania in France, like the tulip craze in Holland or theSouth Sea Bubble in England; the rest of Europe marvelled at it;James II told Adda, the Pope's Nuncio, that he considered flatteryand adulation had turned Louis's head. Matthew Prior rebuked theflourishing paintings in Versailles by saying in answer to thequestion whether the decorations of Kensington House were assplendid—"the splendours of my master's actions are to be foundanywhere but in his own house."

Still, a reign outwardly magnificent and adorned with everyvariety of talent, a series of showy, if empty, victories, a loveof the arts, a generous temper and a certain swell of soul in theKing himself, to a certain degree justified incense that otherwisehad been rank indeed.

With Louvois and Colbert for his ministers, Condé, Turenne, andLuxembourg for his generals, Vauban for his engineer, Racine,Corneille, Boileau for his poets, and Moliere for his dramatist, tomention only a few, the King could not be otherwise thanmagnificent and have something of the dazzle of the sun god in theeyes of his subjects and even a little glitter for posterity.

Versailles is a tremendous effort of flattery; when it was inthe height of its glory there was not a corner that did not echothe praise of the King who had built it. Here a certain divine,preaching before the King, said: "All men are mortal," and HisMajesty darted one awful look from the gilt pew, upon which thesentence was hastily amended"—almost all men," and HisMajesty was appeased and the great people about him drew theirbreaths again; when he was on his death-bed he said to his familywho wept: "Did you think I was immortal?" It would seem as if thetone should be one of question, not of reproach, as commonlyinterpreted, as if he would say: "Were not you also deceived intothinking I was a God?"

No man ever received more varied and splendid forms of flattery;two triumphal gates were erected in Paris in commemoration of thewar of 1672 and the much-vaunted crossing of the Rhine, whichNapoleon considered "a fourth-rate military exploit"; it is certainthat he really believed in his own greatness, and firm in thatconviction, was gracious enough to ordinary men; he outlived themen who had made him great and sank into the dreariest of virtues,religious fanaticism; the inscription on his coffin-plate, torn offin the sack of the Cathedral of St. Denis during the Revolution,was, perhaps, the first simple thing said of Louis XIV andtherefore the most affecting:

HERE IS THE BODY OF LOUIS 14.
BY THE GRACE OF GOD, KING OF FRANCE
AND VERY CHRISTIAN KING OF NAVARRE
WHO DIED IN HIS CHÂTEAU OF VERSAILLES
SEPTEMBER 1715
REST IN PEACE.

The whole is in a shaking hand and above are his arms faintlyscratched on the copper. After the noisy pageant of his reign thesewords read as sadly as sounds a sudden chord at the end of atriumphal march of music.

King Louis had to use the art of flattery himself on occasion;the duc de St. Simon draws a picture of him conducting themoney-lender Bernard round Versailles and flattering the fellowvillainously with the ultimate object of negotiating a largeloan.

This was when the dark days were coming and the last ducat,which the King had so proudly said would win in the great fight,was found in the bank at Amsterdam, not in French coffers, and thegold plate had to be sold.

Of all the compliments paid to this King he received none asmagnificent as that paid to Alfonso the Wise; the Cortes of Castiledivided the new code of laws into seven parts and dedicated eachpart to a different letter of the King's name; this was lofty andceremonious flattery; dignified flatteries were also paid togreatness by Bossuet, Fléchier and Massillon in their FuneralSermons.

Bossuet's orations are gorgeous for diction and eloquence; hisgenius was fortunate in having generally noble subjects, but evenwhen praising one not beyond censure, as Henriette-Marie de France,wife to the first Charles Stewart, or her daughter, Henriette-Anned'Angleterre, duch*esse d'Orléans, he kept above the mere courtier'spraise and elevated his theme by the treatment of it; though he isvery tender in his treatment of the last princess. "She acquiredtwo realms by agreeable means" is a jesuitical way of describingthe lady's intrigues, which led to the disgraceful treaty ofDover.

There are many beautiful strokes in this exquisite flattery ofthe dead; "Yes, madame was gentle towards death as she always wasto everyone," and again: "Neither glory nor youth cost her asigh"—"An immense regret of her sins prevented her regrettinganything else."

With Condé, Bossuet had his most splendid chance and used itsplendidly; yet in several passages he unconsciously displays themere showy qualities of his hero, a certain affectation of glory,which was the pose of the country, a certain lauding of commonachievement, an utter misconception of the result of all theseflamboyant feats, an ignorance of the effect of them on the future,which makes his adulation ring hollow.

The Prince de Condé was a great general and an amiable man, butno hero unless that title be bestowed on merely successfulwarriors; but to Bossuet the war of 1672 was "holy" because it wasagainst Protestantism, and the worldly Condé became in his eyes "aman after God's own heart."

There is in his panegyric the same brittle splendour as glittersin the decorations at Versailles; it raises a gorgeous phantom,which for the moment dazzles, but when we are used to the radiancewe discover that we gaze on nothing solid but a jewelled sham.

Bossuet much magnifies the famous battle of St. Neff; Madame deSévigné describes it more accurately when she says: "We lost somuch at this victory that, save for the Te Deum, we mighthave thought it a defeat."

Fléchier, in his sermon on the death of Turenne, contrived toflatter the King as well as his general.

"We live under a Prince, who, great and brilliant as he is—waswilling to obey before he commanded."

The subject, however, could not teach the King any of thescience of war; despite Fléchier's flowing periods Louis was nogeneral and was even deficient in personal bravery, and when he, towhom his poets apologised for comparing him with so mean aconqueror as Alexander, returned to Versailles with his ladies, hiscooks, his opera company and his flatterers, Turenne might havesaid as James did when his son-in-law deserted him—"after all, agood trooper would have been more loss."

The great English general who rendered useless the exploits ofCondé and Turenne had no such flatterer as Bossuet or Flechier; theDuke of Marlborough was praised by Addison, certainly; but "TheCampaign" is no fine poem and the celebrated simile of the angel"guiding the whirlwind" is unfortunate, for never was there aneminent man with less of the spiritual in his composition than JohnChurchill.

Avarice, which was his most unpopular, but not his worst, fault,may have been the reason why he was, notwithstanding the greatsplendours of his achievements, so little flattered; the nation'scompliment of Blenheim was not one to recommend itself to a meanman and the Duke's quarrels with Sir John Vanbrugh, the architect,were miserably protracted; Marlborough was in disgrace long beforethe building was finished and it remained incomplete; a rathermeaningless monument like a gushing letter left unsigned.

Neither was the great general well-served by the painters; thegood looks and charm that captivated his contemporaries do notappear on canvas, where he is shown as florid and rather vulgar.The same may be said of the other man so distinguished for hisbeauty, Monmouth, against whom Marlborough fought atSedgemoor—Dryden says of him: "Paradise was open in his face," butthis is not confirmed by any of his portraits save that mysteriouspainting supposed to have been sketched after his death.

The praise of ladies is a softer theme and one more gracious forpoets to handle. Addison is better remembered for that one line "tolove her is a liberal education" than for the whole of "TheCampaign."

Among all his fanciful nymphs Waller celebrated one livingbeauty, Dorothy Sidney, Countess of Sunderland; the Countess didnot lose her head over the warm praises of the poet; she survivedher husband, who fell at the battle of Newbury, many years, andbecame a shrewd, gossiping old lady and a good letter-writer.

Another lady of this family was praised by Ben Jonson as:"Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother—" This was Sir Philip Sidneywho fell at Zutphen leaving a curiously bright memory only to becompared to that of Lucius Cary, Lord Falkland, who is for everenshrined by Lord Clarendon in his "History of the Rebellion."

That voluminous writer, Dupleix, flattered the Queen of Navarreduring her lifetime and wrote a satire on her after her death; thisis the very ugliest side of Court flattery. This lady, Margaret ofall the Margarets, received much extravagant flattery; she seems tohave been a most attractive, witty woman; among all the hyperbolewritten of her, one remembers the impression given by one simplestatement—when the chronicle says: "When the Queen of Navarredanced in the torch-dance at the Louvre her eyes were so brightthat she needed no flambeaux," we do get a picture of radiant androyal beauty.

The praise of ladies is hardly flattery, but one cannot forbearfrom mentioning what is perhaps the most lovely compliment everpaid to a woman. It is Petrarch's:

"Clear, fresh and sweet water,
That bathes the beautiful limbs
Of her who, to me, alone appears
Worthy to be called woman."

The French have always been very skilful at extravagantflattery; it is said that Benserade, after trying in vain to extorta pension from Cardinal Mazarin, broke into the minister's house atnight, forced his way to the Cardinal's bedside, and told him thathe could not contain his joy at being told that some of Mazarin'spoems had been compared to his own wretched efforts.

The ruse sounds laboured but must have been conducted with muchaddress for the poet received the pension.

It was he that composed the following epitaph on CardinalRichelieu, which at least has the merit of frankness.

"Here lies, yes, dead, it's true,
The famous Cardinal de Richelieu.
And what makes me so blue,
My pension lies here too."

Their "pensions" were always a painful subject with poets;Spenser had to wait wearily for his, Dryden to change his religionto keep his, Swift became embittered, almost insane, waiting forone, Samuel Butler could get nothing at all from Charles II, thoughthat monarch knew portions of "Hudibras" by heart; avarice,it would seem, is often a stronger passion than vanity, since oftenthe most fulsome flattery has not been powerful enough to open thepurse-strings of the great.

A writer who patronised kings instead of cringing to them, thebrilliant, generous, and lovable Voltaire, paid, not fromnecessity, but desire, many magnificent compliments in his grandcourtly manner.

His dedication of "Brutus" to that most fascinating of rakes andwits, Viscount Bolingbroke, is a high compliment to the English,and in itself very interesting.

Zaïre is dedicated to that worthy citizen of Wandsworth,Mr. Falkener, in graceful words of friendship: "You are English, mydear friend, and I was born in France, but those who love the artsare all compatriots."

Voltaire had always something lively and pleasingly daring inhis writing that shows even in these dedications; Mahometwas dedicated, by a happy stroke, to the Pope: "to the Head of thetrue Religion I dedicate this work against the founder of a falseand barbarous sect."

Voltaire did not lose his turn of language when writingItalian.

Benedict XIV seems to have been overwhelmed by thecompliment.

Overcome by receiving all at once a five-act drama, a poem onFontenoy, the lines on his own portrait and the flattering letter,the Pope returns a rather touching compliment which has all thepleasing simplicity of the Italian. He proceeds to appoint Voltairearbitrator in a scholarly dispute about a line in Virgil; it is acurious and graceful compliment.

Voltaire dedicates Mérope to Scipion Maffei, author ofthe Italian Mérope which he had at first meant to translateinto French; he found the two languages so different that he wrotean original play. Voltaire concludes with a fine compliment:"Posterity will learn with delight that your country has renderedyou the rarest honours and that Verona has raised a statue to youwith this inscription: 'To Marquis Scipion Maffei living,'—aninscription as fine in its way as that one reads at Montpellier:'To Louis XIV after his death.'"

Voltaire's flattery was always gracious and grand, like anobleman's salute—in offering "L'Orphelin de la Chine" to the ducde Richelieu, he says: "I want, Monseigneur, to present you with abeautiful Genoa marble and I have only Chinese figures to offeryou."

This allusion to the gratitude of Genoa, the town that the Dukehad saved, could not be more delicately turned; the wholededication is charming; the play itself makes an interestingcomparison with that written on the same subject by Metastasio; itis extraordinary how differently the same anecdote is treated.

The much-flattered madame de Pompadour received a dignifiedhomage from Voltaire when he was already old: "...I dare to thankyou publicly for the protection you have offered to a great numberof artists, writers and other people of merit."

This was little more than the truth; the lady was a magnificentpatroness; Boucher's pictures of her immortalise an epoch. She gavean Abbé, afterwards the Cardinal de Bernis, a pension of 1400livres and apartments in the Tuileries for some pretty verses thathe wrote in her honour. A few graceful lines have seldom been sowell paid.

One compliment paid to madame de Pompadour had disastrousresults; she was so flattered by receiving a personal letter fromthe wily Maria Theresa that to please the Empress she involvedFrance in the Seven Years War.

In his oration on the officers who died in the campaign of1741—the disastrous retreat from Prague—Voltaire praises, in awarm and moving fashion, a very different person from the marquisede Pompadour; this was his friend, the young marquis deVauvenargues, the famous philosopher who faced a sad suffering lifewith such patient serenity.

Vauvenargues himself, most pure-minded and austere of men, wrotean Elegy on Louis XV. It makes strange reading now, butthere can be no doubt that it was written in perfect sincerity, andat that time, Louis le Bien-Aimé, with his beauty, his gifts, hispopularity, may have well seemed to the ardent spirit ofVauvenargues to have promised to become a great sovereign; thesubject did not live to see the King become old in contempt, slothand vice, or to hear that thundering rush of feet to the new King'sroom when the one candle went out at the King's window inVersailles and what was left of the once splendid youth, lay, awretched ruined body, forsaken and despised.

Satirists are seldom successful when they endeavour to flatter;Hogarth dedicated "The March to Finchley" to the King, but George,furious, naturally enough, at the caricature of his soldiers,expressed his dislike of the picture very forcibly, and Hogarth ina rage inscribed the picture to the King of Prussia.

A forgotten worthy, one Simon Degge, was happier in his methods;in his book, "The Parson's Counsellor," he wrote a dedication toWoods, Bishop of Lichfield, praising him for restoring LichfieldCathedral which had been nearly destroyed during the Civil War; thebishop had not really touched a stone, but the sarcasm told, and,for very shame, he rebuilt the church.

There is not, perhaps, in any language a more touching andbeautiful compliment than that uttered by Roland, when, after thefatal battle of Roncesvalles, he brought the body of Oliver andthose of the other dead peers to be blessed and absolved by thedying Archbishop Turpin who was his sole fellow survivor:

Sweet companion Oliver
Never in all chivalry
Has there been such a knight as thou.

This poem, "La Chanson de Roland," is perhaps one of the finestpieces of flattery a poet ever paid to his own country.

But this is exquisite flattery, the perfection of the art thathas been practised by famous men in all ages; this is homageindeed, for it has preserved the memories of persons otherwise noteven names to-day, and heightened the renown of those already bytheir own merits great.

Flattery always reads more unconvincingly than satire, unlessthis be too utterly savage, for instance when Pope writes: "Mannerswith candour are to Benson given—to Berkeley every virtue underHeaven." The second line does not sound very likely, though one isassured that the venerable prelate praised was a saint, yet thefirst line seems quite a life-like touch.

As instances of praise that sound both noble and true, one maymention the epitaph of the Duke of Newcastle in Westminster Abbey:"All the sisters were chaste and all the brothers valiant." Andalso the remark made of one of the Earls of Derby by an oldchronicler, that when he died the noble virtue of hospitalityseemed to fall asleep!

In conclusion, one may mention a few of the famous people whoneither wrote nor painted, who had indeed no particular gifts, butwho contrived by understanding the art of flattery to rule kings,queens, and nations.

Madame Concini, an Italian of humble birth, ruled France throughher influence over Marie de Medicis; when she was accused ofwitchcraft she was asked what magic she had used to acquire such apower over the Queen, and she replied scornfully: "The only magic Ihave used is the power of a strong mind over a weak one." She mighthave said: "I knew how to flatter."

Cardinal Mazarin, who attained to regal power, is an arch-typeof the skilful flatterer—he never used force till he had exhaustedpersuasion, and in the rare cases where his flatteries did notattain their object, he let his displeasure fall through otherhands so that he was never associated with rebuke orpunishment.

The duch*ess of Marlborough kept her remarkable hold over QueenAnne in the same way, but she lacked the tact of Mazarin and wascursed with a bad temper, so, in the end, she had to give way to amore adroit flatterer, Mrs. Masham.

Men like Alberoni, the Abbé Dubois, Struenzee, Potemkin, tomention but a few, achieved their remarkable careers with the aidof flattery.

The knowledge of how and when to flatter has always been veryuseful to criminals and adventurers; in stories of fraud one isoften impressed by the credulity of the dupe—this often seemsunbelievable.

The secret of this is, of course, flattery, as for instance inthat most gigantic of frauds, the affair of the DiamondNecklace.

This whole disastrous crime, so complicated, so unbelievable,that ruined Marie Antoinette and has been called "the prologue tothe French Revolution," was entirely due to the fact that madame dela Motte was able to flatter the Cardinal de Rohan into thinkingthe Queen was corresponding with him.

Gregori Leti told Charles II that he intended to write memoriesof his Court—the King gave permission, but warned him not to giveoffence to anyone.

"But if I were as wise as Solomon," protested the historian, "Imust offend someone."

"Imitate Solomon, then," replied the King, "write proverbs andleave history alone."

But Leti could not forbear from writing his book. When it waspublished he was banished the Court.

This was a pretty commentary on the art of flattery, which hasalways been, and always will be, one of the graces and one of thelaws of civilisation.

4. GEORGE NOEL GORDON, SIXTH LORD BYRON

LORD BYRON was a man whose personality was larger than hisachievement and whose fame was larger than either. How can weaccount for the Byronic legend or understand why this man, of allmysterious and fascinating men, should have been extolled all overEurope as an embodiment of mystery and fascination, or why heshould have been allowed at once the dark attraction of unnamablesin and the bright brilliancy of heroic virtue?

Romantic of the romantics, the bulk of whose work has perishedbecause of a tawdry falsity of design and colouring, he was yetcapable of dissecting himself and his times with the sharp cynicismof the cool intellectual.

A Prince of lovers, the Don Juan de nos jours, symbol ofthe seductive and successful libertine, his amorous intrigues wereneither splendid nor satisfying, and appear to have left him notwith the sense of blasting remorse suitable to one of the sombrerakes, of whom he was the prototype, but rather with the sourafter-taste of one who has, half-heartedly, been intentionallyvicious.

Many of his actions were those of a cad, an egoist, a pamperedposeur who wilfully exaggerated his faults in order toattract attention, yet was capable of sound common sense, ofdesperate impatience with himself, of that pure torment which comesfrom the recognition of the unescapable torments of others. TheByronic "doom," the theme of the gloomy inscrutable hero, beautifulas Phoebus, cursed as Lucifer, so often copied, so often parodied,seems now merely silly. Yet Lord Byron's own life was, in fact,such a story; partly through circ*mstances, partly through his ownself-conscious efforts, he did, in his own short career, embody thetype and play out the incidents that became so foolishly popularand were in consequence so sharply caricatured.

The author of "Manfred," "The Corsair," "The Bride of Abydos,"and "Childe Harold," was himself as dazzlingly handsome, asferociously unhappy, as "doomed" as any sardonic, black-cloakedsinner of them all, and the social crime, through which Byron fell,was one then considered dark enough to stamp any man "Mad, bad anddangerous to know," as one of his lovers styled him in a phrase tooclever to be quite true.

Byron probably was nearer madness—genuine insanity—than any ofhis contemporaries realised—"bad" only in a small sense; hisfaults were petty—snobbishness, bad taste, uncontrolled temper,raw vanity, a childish desire to boast and to be praised, remarked,and feared. "Dangerous to know" is a doubtful description of theviolent dandy à bonnes fortunes; it is certain that most ofhis mistresses were perilous to him, and that the only womanfor whom he ever felt any sincere tenderness, Augusta Leigh, was,undoubtedly, fatal to his entire career.

It was the women, hysterical, fine-drawn, idle grandesdames, like Caroline Lamb, or bold emotional adventuresses likeClaire Clairmont, or stupid acquisitive sensualists like theContessa Guiccioli that pursued and captured a resentful,flattered, insincere, and inwardly wearied lover in the fashionablepoet. His one encounter with "a virtuous woman" broke him. All thesound and fury of the satanic male, with his brilliant sins andlurid rebellions, were shattered against the unassailablerespectability of an innocent young lady. In the deadly impact ofthis meeting of opposites, it was the obscure, ordinary AnnabellaMilbanke that was victorious. Her cool fingers "touched pitch andwere not defiled." Withdrawing herself from the sulphurouscontamination of wickedness, she saved the soul of Augusta Leigh,to her own satisfaction, and taught the unhappy libertine that itwas, after all, an uncomfortable matter to sin some sins and boastsome boasts in the drawing-rooms of fashionable London. So farvictorious was the high-minded Annabella, that her exhaustedhusband, having sounded the depths of vice, sighed in his last daysfor a reconciliation with the chilly rectitude of the well-behavedwife.

The fallen angel with his wings clipped by the hand ofpropriety, the roving rake, disgusted with theatrical love affairs,longed for "life with a virtuous woman in the country." Manfred hadstrayed from the edges of the impressive abyss where thethunder-clouds lowered, and would have liked slippers, a fire-side,and a housewife's smile.

In brief, Don Juan had made a mess of love, life, and letters,and but for the supreme good luck of a death that might at best betermed heroic and was at least dramatic, he might have petered outas a rustic squire with a managing wife, now and then grinning withcronies over a glass, at the delicious follies of youth. Eitherthis or the mad-house might have been the fate of an elderly, adiseased, a burnt-out Byron. As it was, he died just in time toestablish his fame, his legend, his eternal youth. Missolonghiperpetuated the Byronic myth as imperishably as if it had been castin bronze.

Death has served many famous people very well. Charles I dyinglike James II puling and whimpering with senility in cosy exile,Thomas Chatterton become a prosperous editor or a stout antiquary,Mary Queen of Scots succumbing to a bad leg and a tuberculosis ofthe throat, none would be the figures haloed with romance as theyare now, with their uncommon lives sharply ended by violent, butbrilliant exits. What manner of man was this too famous poet, ofwhose renown we are beginning to be a little weary and whose mainworks we never read?

George Noel Gordon Byron's destiny seemed shaped as much byheredity as by environment. It is possible to suppose that had henever heard of the "doom" in his blood on the one hand, and hadbeen sensibly educated on the other, his tale might have been lessshowy and more happy.

He was born in 1788, the period of titanic upheaval in America,France, and Ireland when the "freedom of man" was in the air, andhis boyhood was passed during the exasperating tumult of theNapoleonic wars, in which the cries of the new democracy were beingheard among the half-insane carnage.

His descent was dubious on both sides; his father, CaptainByron, was one of those professional libertines and gamblers, whoso plentifully garnish the eighteenth century of fiction and offact—a Lord Camelford—a Richard Lovelace; in sober terms anirresponsible rogue, whose person and address were his onlypassport to toleration.

It was a noble family—in fact what so many lesser gentry havesighed to be—descended from a princely French house, that ofBiron, resplendent with Marshals and Dukes, and of Buren, one ofwhose sons became a favourite of an Empress and the ruler ofCourland. The members of the English branch of Byron had afascinating reputation for all the brilliant vices, were given tointer-marrying and eccentricity, and showed their only worldlycleverness in their marriages with heiresses.

When George Noel Gordon Byron was born, the holder of the titlewas the fifth baron, "The Wicked Lord," a creature of almostfabulous outline. The outstanding stain on his murky career hadbeen the duel with William Chaworth, in a locked room by the lightof a candle and with swords of unequal length, which had ended inthe death of Chaworth, and the trial of the noble lord for murder.He escaped punishment by pleading "benefit of clergy" afterstanding trial by his peers. The cause of the duel had been adispute about the number of pheasants on the several estates of thefine gentlemen gathered in a London tavern.

While his heir was being "dragged up" in undignified poverty,Lord Byron lived in the semi-monastic gloom of Newstead Abbey,solitary, but not softened, since he was maliciously employed inillegally selling the timber and otherwise damaging the estate,which was by no means opulent.

On his mother's side the future lord was not more blessed. MissGordon of Gight was Captain Byron's second wife, whom he marriedfor the money that he soon dispersed. She claimed, rather loosely,royal blood, but at least her name was that of the splendid clan ofwhich the Earls of Huntly "the co*cks of the north" were thechieftains. Apart from this she had no advantages; an acknowledgedfool, naturally ill-tempered, soured to frenzy by ill-fortune, shefound herself widowed without means when the boy was three.

A cheerless existence of debt, bitterness, and obscurity waspassed by the lonely child and embittered woman. There was no homebeyond cheap lodgings, mostly in Aberdeen, and worst of all the boywas lame and his mother flung this defect in his face when, in oneof her evil moods, she broke crockery and hurled pots and pansabout. It now seems possible that this famous deformity, whichplayed such an ugly part in Byron's life, was purely nervous, andthat kindness, a stable atmosphere, and early treatment, might havesaved him from what was to be a veritable blight.

In 1798 the fifth lord died in unrepenting old age, leaving adilapidated mansion and an impoverished estate to the unhappy boy.Mrs. Byron's vulgar tantrums alienated her son's legal guardian,Lord Carlisle, and mother and son, now a lord, severely left tothemselves, lived still in lodgings in Nottingham and London.

There was a hideous episode when the child's limping foot wastortured in a quack's wooden instrument, there was the growingboy's desperate shame at his mother's furies, and silly pamperings,and at thirteen there was Harrow.

The lad was sullen, unattractive, "wolfish"; these defects beingobviously the manifestations of deep unhappiness. The first shootsof passion added to his other torments. Close to Newstead, thenlet, Mrs. Byron was established in a small house, and near this wasAnnesley, where dwelt Mary, a descendant of the Mr. Chaworth whohad been the victim of the "Wicked Lord." The plump, shy, sensitiveByron loved in vain; the admired girl chose Jack Musters, and thereis a tale that she casually remarked on "that lame boy," a dart ina heart already lacerated.

In 1801 he met for the first time Augusta Byron, his father'sdaughter by a first marriage with Lady Carmarthen. For her he felta quiet soothing tenderness, which meant more to him than theexciting hero worship given him by the younger boys at Harrow, thehandsome and emotional Clare, Delaware, Long, and Gray.

At seventeen Byron left Harrow, by no means in a cloud of glory;idle, irritable, lusciously romantic, he was considered "not aproper associate" for the average Harrovian.

His relations with Mrs. Byron were then such that he cried: "AmI to call this woman mother?" With his nerves badly rasped he wentup to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1805, and gloomed about withEdward Long, Edleston, a sentimental consumptive young chorister,and other ardent companions.

There was five hundred pounds a year, brandy, music, romanticfriendship, but the restless lad was not satisfied. The deepeststing was his insignificance; he was provincial, awkward,self-conscious, aware of a strain of effeminacy, of a painfuladmiration for that assured composure, that worldlyself-sufficiency which he never quite attained and which probablyno one, who in childhood has been neglected and despised, ever doesattain. To balance this sense of inferiority Lord Byron posed withmen-servants, carriage, dogs, saddle-horses, clothes, fantasticeven for those expensive days. He got into debt and published someverses, "Hours of Idleness," which sold well and, what was moreimportant to the author, solidified and clarified hispersonality.

A number of new friends acclaimed in the poet what they wouldhave despised in the vapouring undergraduate. He began to shake offhis fears and repressions, the "nerves" consequent on his mother'streatment. He boxed, swam, fenced, rode—and not unskilfully.

He got into debt to the extent of £12,000 on personalextravagances, which included a mistress and spanking-horses toshow off at Brighton, before he left Cambridge in 1808.

It was the era of the dandy—the elegant idle man of fashion, atonce subtle, shallow, useless, and symbolic of all humanity'sdecorative qualities. Like many another with yearnings for thisrole, Byron had not a sufficient income to support it. Hissnobbishness, which sprang, not unnaturally, from the knowledgethat his early upbringing had not been equal to his birth, wasstung by the coldness of high-bred London. There is pathos inByron's insistence on his rank, vulgar as it rings, for this wasbut a gesture of self-defence, a desperate attempt to efface thememory of his impossible mother and the squalid lodgings inAberdeen.

Disgruntled and melancholy, the young man, just of age, retiredto the uncomfortable gloom of Newstead, gaunt amid thetimber-stripped park. He found some pleasure in writing "EnglishBards and Scotch Reviewers," a satire against the critics of hisfirst efforts, but the Byronic "doom" was beginning to darken down,or so he thought. The pose of the misunderstood solitary becameconfirmed, even the death of his dog seemed part of a curse. Anattempt to be "wicked" was not found very stimulating. Endeavouringto exploit the Gothic atmosphere of Newstead, and to imitate theHell Fire Clubs, then a little out of date, there were schoolboyishorgies when the young lord and some Cambridge friends dressed up inhired monkish habits, drank out of a skull conveniently turned upby the gardener, and entertained young ladies who they fondly hopedwould pass as members of a harem, or, at least, as "Paphian girls"fresh from the Isle of Venus.

This rather dismal and theatrical display having come to an endand no desirable opening showing either in private or in publiclife, Mrs. Byron being still alive and the salons of thebeau monde still closed to him, Byron went abroad, ready forany rare or desperate adventure. He had with him a universityfriend, John Cam Hobhouse; there was no objective in view—"thegloomy wanderer" had no desire ever to see England again, and notmuch desire to see anything else. The journey was across Portugal(then the seat of war), Spain, Malta, the Levant, and Greece. Itwas all at concert pitch, exotic love affairs, shipwrecks,thunderstorms, "dressings up," broodings in the moonlight orswimming of the Hellespont, some real raptures, many painfulposes.

The friendship with Hobhouse did not stand the strain, theyparted at Constantinople after dividing a posy of flowers "woefullysick" of each other.

After two years of this, Byron returned to England. There wasreal cause for gloom in the early deaths of his first friends,Long, Wingfield, and Dorset, while the end of the terrible motherin a fit of fury was painfully ugly. Then Matthews, anothercharming associate, was drowned at Cambridge—Byron, almost withrelish, referred to "some curse."

However, he had brought back with him from his travels, togetherwith skulls, urns, tortoises, and a flagon of hemlock, themanuscript of "Childe Harold," cantos I and II. These werepublished in 1812.

The author had already made some friends in the great world,Lord Holland and Tom Moore, and achieved some effect with a manlyspeech in the House of Lords on the troubles in the industrialNorth. With the appearance of the dashing poem, the noble authorfound himself suddenly, not only at the peak of literaryattainment, but the centre of a frenzied personal worship. Theglimpses of autobiography—the picture of the dark stranger withhis unutterable gloom, his "Marble heart," his deep, secret,unattained passion—drove all the idle fashionables crazy tounderstand, to console this wicked fascinating despair. Howseductively cynical, how meltingly romantic it was to read:

"For he through sin's long labyrinth had run
Nor made atonement when he did amiss—"

With such vivid force had Byron dramatised his own sensations,his own experiences, that he had created a second self morebrilliant, more complete than the reality. His personal beautycompleted his conquest of the female part of le beau mondeof the Regency.

Short, inclined to stoutness, slightly lame, with affected,self-conscious manners, rather ill-bred, Byron yet possessed abeauty of feature that was neither effeminate nor ignoble. It was aGreek mask, with soft bright eyes, proud lips, a sulky brow and theadded attraction of richly-waving chestnut hair. These cherishedlocks were sometimes put in curl-papers, but Byron cursed himselfas a fool for the weakness. His voice was charming, his hands whiteand slender, his figure, by dint of anxious dieting, shapely, thelameness was scarcely noticeable—was even seductive with its hintof the cloven hoof.

Then there was the title, the wicked doomed ancestry, the talesof orgies at Newstead and abroad, the gloomy reserve with which theawkward man concealed his social inadequacies, the athleticprowess, the "Crede Biron!" motto, the air of cynical misanthropythat covered so much unsuspected uneasiness. Nothing waslacking.

The bullied child of Aberdeen, the sulky fat schoolboy "sentdown" from Harrow, the posing, obscure undergraduate had mergedinto a man more famous, more sought-after, than any man before orsince. London society had never known anything like it; thehuntresses were hot-foot on the track of an unbelievably desirableprey. The first of these eager Dianas to score a success was LadyBess-borough's daughter, Lady Caroline, the spoilt, whimsical,bad-tempered, extremely fashionable wife of William Lamb,afterwards Queen Victoria's Lord Melbourne.

"Caro" was thin, lazy, with huge eyes and capricious manners,selfish, unscrupulous, shameless, but she queened it at MelbourneHouse, most exclusive of aristocratic mansions; she was definitelybon ton in a society ruled by the changing mistresses of thePrince Regent. Byron's love affair with this elegant lady completedthe furore the "Childe" made in London society. He never cared muchfor her, but he was dazzled by her "connexions" and would not shakeoff her hysteric clutch. Afterwards he frankly admitted that thetiresome woman "had few personal attractions" and that he had toforce his inclinations in the whole affair. No doubt, however, heenjoyed the sharp emotionalism of the intrigue while it lasted.

It was an exciting summer for London society, that of 1812, whenthe waltz and Lord Byron went to the head of many fair ladies.Byron's success had its drawbacks; he soon wearied of "Caro," whosebehaviour became so volcanic that she had to be withdrawn toIreland; he wearied too of the letters she sent from her exile; hisdebts mounted and Newstead would not let.

A piquant friendship with Lady Melbourne, his mistress'smother-in-law, and a quasi-domestic episode with Lady Oxford, thenin the last glow of her beauty and at the placid end of her lovers,helped the poet to endure the fame that caused women to faint athis glance, and to bombard him with petitions for a ringlet or arendez-vous.

Towards the end of this hectic year Byron met AnnabellaMilbanke, the niece of Lady Melbourne, a serious, high-minded,cool-headed young woman. Scorning to join in the excitement thatsurrounded the wicked poet, she ignored him with a deliberateindifference that piqued and fascinated the pursued, harriedgenius. She was also a considerable heiress. In her virginal personseemed the promise of financial security, consolidated socialposition, soothed nerves, a refuge from Lady Caroline, and thatdefinite domestic establishment necessary to a man of title.

Marriage was offered and refused; the family "doom" drew nearerthe sixth lord. In 1813 his half-sister, Augusta Leigh, withdrewfrom the distresses of poverty and a spendthrift husband to theshelter of Lord Byron's house. They had always been attracted, atease in each other's company, mutually tender, affectionate, andloving. They had not been long under one roof when scandal was busyover their relationship. Augusta, plastic, gay, unmoral, andunhappy, seemed not to realise where she was drifting, while herhalf-brother alternated between a boasting zest in the fulfilmentof the family curse and his own peculiar "doom," and a real passionfor a beloved woman—"a perfect and boundless attachment" as heafterwards named his feeling for Augusta. Warned by his femalementor, Lady Melbourne, of his social peril, Byron parted from hishalf-sister and tried to distract himself with a half-cynical,half-sentimental, affair with Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster, andby writing "The Bride of Abydos," a tawdry Eastern tale with the"brother and sister" theme.

To this indiscretion he added wild talk, half-veiled hintsconcerning the paternity of Medora, Augusta Leigh's child, bornthat September, and a general dramatic self-exploitation thatseemed touched with insanity. The growing scandal, which he seemedto enjoy, alarmed his friends; Augusta herself joined in the effortto steer him into safety by means of a wife. Annabella Milbanke,who had maintained a prudent correspondence with him ever since shehad rejected his proposal, was again selected to snatch this brandfrom the burning.

In January, 1815, the year of Waterloo, they were married inspite of the groom's rave doubts. Miss Milbanke undertook theadventure in a spirit of duty and self-sacrifice, she needed allher fortitude. Her husband turned on her immediately: "You shouldhave married me when I first proposed." The delay, he believed, hadmeant the episode with Augusta and endless remorse, misery, andregret. The honeymoon was terrible; though, no doubt, the man'sdespair was genuine, the theatrical displays with which hetormented his young wife, make unsavoury reading. A grotesquelyhorrible visit to Augusta's house where Byron's behaviour passed,he seemed to think, as sardonic passion, but was nearer insanity,enlightened the poor bride about the ugly truth behind all thisfume and fury. With considerable dignity and self-control she madecommon cause with the terrified Augusta, who turned to her forhelp, to save, if not the man, at least the woman, from animpossible passion. The oddly assorted three moved to London, No.13 Piccadilly Terrace, where the emotional tension was not helpedby brandy drinking on the part of Byron, and debts and duns.

At the end of their marriage year a child was born; humiliatingnoisy scenes with creditors, the entry of bailiffs into the house,and, when her baby was three weeks old, Lady Byron had left thehouse to visit her mother.

She was never to return.

With surprising clearness of insight she had discovered that herhusband was impossible to reform or to live with. She had learntfrom a perhaps fallible medical report, which she had had the goodsense to obtain, that the frenzied poet was not "mad." She hadjudged for herself that he was bad and that she could not reformhim. She had the courage to sacrifice any possible hope ofhappiness in order to save herself and her child from moraldegradation. A short note from her father, Sir Roger Milbanke,informed the bewildered and angry husband that his wife would notreturn to him; he was, under pressure, induced to sign a deed ofseparation. He was never to see Annabella or the baby, Augusta Ada,again. This ruined him; his wife's cold virtue shattered him assteel shatters glass; the prim schoolgirl of twenty-one with hervirginal inexperience destroyed, deliberately and for ever, themost famous man of the moment, who had bragged so lavishly of hisSatanic contempt of the conventions. She also deprived him ofAugusta Leigh, whom she continued to dominate. The scandal wasimmediate and deadly. Mrs. Leigh was "cut"; no woman would speak toByron, every room he entered emptied at once of ladies. By the endof April, 1816, he had left England for ever.

In Geneva he met Shelley, who had also been obliged to leave hisnative country with his second wife, Mary Godwin, and herstep-sister, Claire Clairmont, who had forced herself on Byronshortly before and who now greedily reclaimed an unwillinglover.

Soothed by Shelley's influence, Byron completed "Childe Harold,"wrote part of "Manfred" and "The Prisoner of Chillon." These,composed in a frenzy of personal emotion, contain some of his bestwork, far better than the much-acclaimed Oriental poems that he hadwritten at the height of his fame.

His love for Augusta Leigh continued; he dared to hope that shewould throw all to the winds and join him in his exile—but LadyByron stood between him and his "criminal desires." She soinfluenced Augusta that that poor lady obtained a moral victoryover herself—her correspondence with her half-brother wassupervised by the lofty-minded Annabella, until it became whatByron, in disgust, termed "damned crinkam crankam." His own side ofthe correspondence leaves no doubt of the sincerity of his ownfeelings—"we were just formed to pass our livestogether."

After he had flared up in his Geneva poems, Byron moved toVenice. Everything important in his life was over; the remainingyears were but a marking-time till his death. Judged by ordinarystandards he went to pieces morally and physically.

Shelley, in 1818, was shocked by the sordid cheap orgies of thePalazzo Mocenigo, half-harem, half-thieves' kitchen, whereruffians, wild animals, the female scum of the gutters, movedthrough a fantasy of disreputable confusion. Byron himself showedsigns of a very visible damnation—the premature senility thatbrought Robert Burns low. The famous ringlets became grey, thebeautiful face bloated and pasty, the slender hands fat, theelegant figure stout and stooping. He wrote his autobiography,which was never to be published, the splendid "Don Juan" and thelovely: "So, we'll go no more a roving"; in 1819 he was rescuedfrom his harpies and jobbers by Contessa Guiccioli as neatly asAnnabella had rescued him from Augusta.

"I have been more ravished," he wrote, "than anyone since thesiege of Troy." Soon Teresa Guiccioli and her family, the Gambas,were entirely on his hands, and he settled down dully in a dullplace, Ravenna, until 1821, when he moved to Pisa. ClaireClairmont, whom he refused ever to see, sent him by Shelley theirdaughter, the ironically-named Allegra; the unwanted child,despatched to a convent, soon died. There was a quarrel with theShelleys in which Byron behaved badly; he wrote huge labouredpoetic dramas, impossible even for that turgid age.

With the sale of Newstead there was money and an odd interest init, a watching of household books, a checking of expenses thatwould have been more useful in his earlier career. There wasanxiety over another asset once so wilfully squandered—his health,a dreary diet flavoured with magnesia, a pathetic attempt to retainsome semblance of youth.

In 1822 occurred the semi-comic episode of Leigh Hunt's visit tothe salmon-pink Leghorn villa, and immediately afterwards the puretragedy of Shelley's drowning. The horrible spectacle of hisfriend's cremation on the foreshore tore at Byron's nerves and heescaped to Genoa with the tiresome Hunt family clinging to him.While the two men tried to get along together, "The Liberal" Mrs.Hunt, difficult and respectable, sparred with Teresa Guiccioli,silly and sentimental, and the Hunt children quarrelled with theByron menagerie. The fall of Lucifer was without grandeur.

In 1823, Lady Blessington, expecting to find a noble creature ofromantic gloom and power, discovered instead rather a figure offun, flippant, without dignity or breeding, out of date andpainfully ridiculous in his clothes of the cut of fifteen yearsbefore; his green tartan jacket, his nankeen gaiters, his trousers"shrunk from washing"; even his horse hung with senseless gaudyornaments.

Annabella was at once avenged and justified. The apostle of wildromanticism was, in his own person, realistic enough, the splendidsinner had become merely an object of compassion or disdain.

His innate genius showed in the effort he made to get out of thesilly back-water where he stagnated. Greece was making a spasmodicand divided attempt for freedom and John Cam Hobhouse was on theEnglish Committee to assist the Hellenes. Byron offered his help,it was accepted; in August, 1823, he landed at Cephalonia withTrelawney, one of Shelley's friends, Pietro Gamba, Teresa'sbrother, and eight servants. He was in high spirits, though he knewthe difficulties ahead and even had a presentiment that he woulddie in Greece. There was nothing gorgeous or exciting about theenterprise, but Byron showed at first a manly spirit—wished he"had never written a line"—had not come to Greece "to scribblemore nonsense"—and dismissed the local colour as "antiquariantwaddle."

Six months of dismal inaction were spent at a cottage nearCephalonia; Trelawney, sick of waiting and of Byron's renewedneurotics, left for the mainland. In December, 1823, Byron, in thehope of action, decided to join a party of rebels. This was that ofPrince Mavrocordato whose headquarters were at Missolonghi, anunhealthy town on the mud banks of the Gulf of Corinth. Here Byronlanded in the first week of 1824 in a scarlet uniform with hisGreek guards, his servants, his arms and a miniature of hisdaughter, Augusta Ada, but not wearing the Greek helmet he haddesigned for this event. Trelawney had advised him against thistheatrical touch.

From January to April Byron lived in his three-storied house onthe lagoon in the mud and rain, surrounded with every discomfortand exasperation. He was endeavouring to put some organisation intothe Greek resistance against the expected Turkish attack and hefound the lazy and greedy Levantines, with whom he had to deal,very different from any imaginary heroic figures of antiqueHellas.

In January he composed his own farewell—it might be taken forhis own elegy and epitaph; in April he caught a chill and in hisfever had those dreams of England, a wife, a child, stability, thatwere so recurrent and so vain. On Easter Sunday an encouragingletter from Hobhouse found him in the last delirium, with Fletcher,the faithful eccentric valet, trying in vain to take down themuttered, incoherent final instructions. The last names whisperedwere: "Augusta Ada"—the last words: "I want to go to sleep."

There was a distant threat of thunder when he died on theevening of April 19th, 1824.

The brow-beaten, sensitive child, the sulky idle schoolboy, thepathetic poseur of Cambridge and Newstead, the most famous,the most infamous man in London, the keeper of odalisques inVenice, Augusta Leigh's willing lover, the unwilling lover of somany other women, had all merged into that figure will the classicmask, made beautiful again by death, that lay beneath the alienshroud in the mean room at Missolonghi—and the Byron legend wascomplete. The discipline of death had given dignity to one, unableto endure any other discipline, and once more the accident ofmortality had conferred immortality:

5. A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY IN THEINDES

GUILLAUME THOMAS RAYNAL AND HIS WORK

THE work that brought Guillaume Thomas Raynal such brilliantsuccess in his lifetime would be now a mere curiosity ofliterature, with only the odd fascination of a museum piece, wereit not that this "History of the Two Indies" has three distinctclaims on the interest of the student of literature. First, it isan illustration of the power of literary rogues; and to study thepast fashions in literature, their importance, scope and purpose,helps to enable us to put in true perspective the bewilderingfashions of our time, which so confuse the originator and theimitator, the permanent and the transient. Secondly, this book isan example of something more than a fashion, since it profoundlyinfluenced popular opinion and was credited with being one of thesparks that ignited the furnace of the French Revolution It is,then, under this aspect, a fair example of the power that even amediocre mind, exploiting fallacious ideas, may exercise throughthe medium of the pen, if the subject be in favour at the momentand well enough advertised. Thirdly, this impressive-looking work,with its massive air of solidity, is an example of bookmaking, avice that has much grown upon us of late, and that it isinteresting to observe was deftly practised in the eighteenthcentury.

Apart from these three points, which make this pompouscompilation worth some study, it has a borrowed brilliance owing tothe connection with the elusive Elisa Draper, the celestial friendof Laurence Sterne, and in itself possesses an intrinsic charm,which no doubt helped its enormous popularity. It has the merit,not uncommon in clumsy discursive productions, of setting thereader off on pleasing tangents—rather like one of those old,large, untidy maps where, when the ignorance of the cartographerbrought him to a pause, he drew some fanciful coast-line, someimaginary range of mountains, and filled unlikely-looking spaces ofland and sea with odd creatures, fabulous beasts and excitinglittle scenes that do truly transport the gazer to those impossibleregions of fantasy for which most of us feel an occasionalnostalgia.

Raynal's life explains his work; he was in his own timeconsidered a great man, and he performed at least one action thathad a tinge of greatness. For the rest, he was one of thoserestless spirits who, either by reason of their gifts or throughchance circ*mstances, exercise on their times an influence out ofall proportion to their merits.

Born in the last years of the reign of Louis XIV, GuillaumeThomas Raynal was educated by the Jesuits and entered this famousOrder. In early middle life he left the Society of Jesus and thepriesthood, at the same time abandoning the tenets of Christianity,not altogether from sincere conviction but with something of theimpatience of one who feels his talents wasted in the provinces anddistinction difficult to obtain in a well-organised establishmentof clever men. Throwing himself on Paris he soon became acquaintedwith the philosophers, as the encyclopedists termed themselves, andeagerly absorbed all the fashionable terms of thought andexpression. For a while he edited the Mercure de France, buthis own writings were sparse, his principal efforts being a historyof the Stadtholdership of the United Provinces and an essay on thedivorce of Henry Tudor and Catherine of Aragon, neither of whichworks brought him—what he keenly desired—money and fame. Heindeed, greatly to his chagrin, reached late middle age withoutcutting any considerable figure in the intellectual society towhich he had attached himself, and his greatest claim to renown wasmerely that he was the friend of men like Diderot, Grimm, andD'Holbach, and echoed their opinions and supported their views.

But an eager, inflammable, not too level-headed writer, with afacile pen, plenty of courage and gusto, was not likely to lackinspiration for ever in this forcing house of free-thinking,sentimentality, utopia-building and general rebellion against allhitherto accepted conventions, in which the eighteenth-centuryParisian intellectuals fermented and seethed. The hostileactivities of the police and the Church only inflamed further theserebels against all authority, and with them in all their extremesof atheism, republicanism, and idealism was Guillaume ThomasRaynal, though he contrived to avoid the unpleasant attentions ofthe law.

Consider the mental atmosphere, stifling, depressing, andexciting as that of a violent thunder-storm, in which Raynal foundhimself, a man nearing fifty, running about the salons ofliterary Paris in the 1700's. Apart from the commotion caused bythe exposition of such novelties as the standpoints of the agnosticand the atheist, there was the ceaseless echo of the cry of "therights of man"—easy to shout, difficult to reduce to a workableplan. The exile of Jean Jacques Rousseau was all that was needed tocrown the immense popularity of his three great books, whichinspired, maddened, and confused a whole generation; Raynal becameat once an ardent disciple of the author of Du Contrat Social,La Nouvelle Héloïse and Emile. He showed, however, nopractical enthusiasm for the "back to nature" movement, butcontinued to enjoy as far as his means allowed him the benefits ofthat civilisation he so whole-heartedly condemned. Rousseau, a manof genius, but also a diseased neuropath and something of ascoundrel until hysterically converted, possessed thatextraordinary sincerity which stamps a period as a die stamps wax.Raynal was only one of thousands who sincerely shared the Genevan'shonest belief in virtue and goodness without an enquiry into whatthese terms really meant, and the ex-Jesuit was easily swept intothat stream of sensibility, fed by the tears of Clarissa and Julie,which watered all intellectual France. In 1751 the Abbé Prévost,himself the creator of a far different heroine, the enchantingManon, translated "Clarissa Harlowe," and all fashionableParis raved over the woes of the ill-used English Miss. Frenchpraise of the masterpiece of Richardson passed all bounds of commonsense; Diderot, a frantic Anglophil, found the novel superior notonly to the Greek dramatists but also, oddly enough, to theliterary efforts of Moses, and Rousseau seized upon the idea, andhanging round it his own peculiar graces, theories and sentiments,produced La Nouvelle Héloïse, that textbook of sensibilitywhich had such a powerful effect on thousands of readers.

Not only was Raynal exposed to these overwhelminginfluences—those of the intellectual, political, and religiousagitators named the philosophers, and those of the sentimentalists,which blended with and enervated these sterner teachings—but in1762 Laurence Sterne visited Paris and gave a new twist to thefashions of the moment. In the January of the previous year butone, the first volume of Tristram Shandy had appeared—itssuccess has been described as delirious. Oliver Goldsmith thusdescribed the furore made by this bizarre production: "I boughtlast season a piece that had no other merit on earth than onehundred and ninety-five breaks, seventy-two ha-ha's, three goodthings and a garter. And yet it played off and bounced and crackedand made more sport than a firework."

And for a good many years Sterne, his reputation and his works,did bounce and crack not only over his native country, but overFrance.

When in 1764 he preached a sermon before the English Ambassadorin the Chapel of the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, the entire strength ofthe encyclopaedists gathered to gaze on this odd figure that theComte de Bissy was content to believe was that of the Court fool ofthe English King. Raynal cultivated eagerly the acquaintance ofthis original writer named by Voltaire Le Rabelaisd'Angleterre, and devoured with the zest common to hiscountrymen Frénais' translation of "The Sentimental Journey," whichappeared after the translation of "Tristram Shandy" in 1769. LeVoyage Sentimental proved instantly acceptable to the Frenchand ran into edition after edition, something like seventy havingappeared up to the present day. This odd book also was at onceimitated by some of those clever writers who never seem to have anoriginal idea, but who cannot take pen from paper when once theyhave an original model. After all, it was easy to set off fromanywhere to anywhere, noting all the whimsical, pathetic incidentsby the way, shedding more tears than ink and making copious use ofthe tricks of style so difficult to originate, so facile tocopy—and thus there were journeys here, there and everywhere bytravellers who never failed to find virtue in distress or someill-treated animal in need of help.

When Sterne returned to England in 1765 he made the acquaintanceof the fascinating Elisa Draper, a real woman, who was destined tojoin two imaginary heroines, Clarissa and Julie, in popular favourShe had come to England to educate her two children and as somerelief from the company of one of those dull husbands toofrequently the lot of ladies of extreme sensibility—hersentimental flirtations with Sterne were soon celebrated, and whenthe "Letters to Elisa" were translated in 1776, the name of thewife of the worthy Daniel Draper became as famous as that of Yorickhimself. Everything that fashion demanded this friendship had—thevirtue of Clarissa, the sensibility of Julie—"a love for evershadowed by an approaching eternal separation"—tears,renunciation, and best of all, two death-beds. Sterne was known tohave long danced "a gallopade with death" and Elisa hadconsumption, or something near enough for poetic purposes. Shelanguished in the most delicate throes of sensibility and when in1776 she came to Paris, after a romantic flight from her unromantichusband, she was frantically the vogue and captivated Raynal evenmore decidedly than she had captivated Sterne, whose loss wasfollowed by some unpleasant passages with his family. Atthirty-five Elisa was dead. Nothing could have been moresuitable.

Edgar Allan Poe considered the death of a romantic, beautifulwoman the climax of poetry, and the opinion of the last quarter ofthe eighteenth century considered an early end from decline theclimax of sentiment. The portrait of Elisa alive was not consideredso gratifying as Elisa's urn guarded by the weeping figures ofBenevolence and Genius, which adorned the cloisters of BristolCathedral. The angelic creature snatched up—not to the despisedChristian heaven—but to the Elysian fields where Rousseau, withpowdered curls and works complete, is seen arriving in acontemporary print, became all spiritual, a focus and a symbol forthe feeling of the time. What was she like? No portrait of her isknown. There must always be some curiosity about a woman whocontrives to impress intelligent men as celestial. The robust mindof Thackeray found her almost as intolerable as the dead ass of thejourney that so roused his exasperation, and entertained doubtsabout the mental gifts that Raynal among others found sodazzling.

Describing her sailing from Deal after the eternal farewellswith Sterne, Thackeray adds: "It was high time she went." He alsohighly condemns Sterne's conduct in sneering behind her back at thefair "Bramine" and her effusive epistles. Conduct caddish, nodoubt, but that does credit to Sterne's perception—though at thecost of his manners. After all, a brilliant wit has some right toplay any silly fish who swallows his bait, and Elisa was, it may besuspected, muddle-headed and flighty, a blue-stockingmanquée who was never so well suited as when safely buriedunder her flower-wreathed urn. She was, however, in the full flushof her fame when Raynal, under these influences of theEncyclopaedia and of Rousseau and Sterne, decided to contributesome great work of his own to the torrent of books that flooded theprinting presses and disturbed the public mind. He had no greatgift for fiction, so he realised that it was hopeless to runtogether a novel exploiting the sorrows of a pair of diseased,virtuous, and frustrated lovers, or the travels of some meanderingidler susceptible to lame beggars, tender grisettes, anddying donkeys; thus tested, Raynal took a heroic decision. He wouldwrite a history of the new world, i.e. the whole universe saveEurope, in which he would show a hideous picture of the cruelties,vanities, superstitions and corruptions of the Europeans ascompared to the wrongs and virtues of the noble savage, beloved andextolled by Rousseau himself.

Along with these high moral lessons would be useful informationabout the products of the new world, descriptions of thecivilisations of the East, an account of the great TradingCompanies, and a narration of all the voyages of adventure anddiscovery that had led to the conquest of the new world by the oldworld. Raynal felt that such a work would have both the attractionof novelty and the cachet of fashion, and he was annoyedwith a friend who, on hearing of his project, exclaimed: "That willmean fifteen years' hard work!"

Raynal had other ideas; he wanted not the slow-coming, oftenposthumous fame of the scholar or the historian, but the quickapplause and lavish fees that are too often the reward of thetricks of the cheapjack. In about a year he produced a work towhich he gave the impossible title "Philosophic and PoliticalHistory of the Factories and the Commerce of the Europeans in theIndies." As it was useless to hope for a French licence, this bookwas published in the home of the free press, the Hague, in 1770. Itwas issued anonymously and was in fact the work of many hands—asymposium gathered from Raynal's friends. Most of thephilosophes were, in plain terms, free-lance journalists andpamphleteers, even hack-writers who could turn their brilliant pensto any subject that came their way.

Raynal, then, had no difficulty in gathering from them variousarticles on topical subjects, or little historical sketches drawnfrom books of travel, which he strung together with some of his ownreflections and observations, and interspersed with notes gatheredfrom practical people who cared little about the rights of man, themoral law, the noble savage, or Elisa, but who were able to givevery lucid descriptions of the pepper, camomile, or coco-nut tree,the trading stations on the Malabar coast or the climate ofBatavia, together with a fair idea of the profits to be made fromthe growing and importing of such useful articles as tobacco, tea,and indigo. Among the better-known contributors to this medleyFrench critics number Diderot, d'Holbach, Grimm, Thomas, Debuc, andthat fascinating Comte de Guibert, whose manly charms drove themuse of the Encyclopaedia, Mlle de Lespinasse, to a modishly dismaldeath and roused the youthful ardours of Madame de Stael.

What share each contributor had in this compilation, how muchRaynal wrote himself, and how many passages came from the pens ofobscure traders, sea captains, and shopkeepers, can never be known,nor is it an important question since there is no matter in thefour volumes worth disputing. It is usually conceded, however, thatthe rhetorical passages, diatribes against tyranny, etc., whichmade the book so successful, were written either by Raynal himselfor by Diderot. This piece of energetic book-making was instantlysuccessful, as specious work so often is; thousands of copiesflowed into France and handsome sums of money into the pockets ofRaynal. If any of this money was passed on to his numerous andoften needy collaborators, we do not know—it is permitted to hopeso.

The triumph of this odd book was not altogether undeserved; itwas nicely in the vogue, though not an imitation of Sterne, it was,on a large scale, a sentimental journey and gave abundantopportunity for the shedding of those tears and the heaving ofthose sighs that every educated person was so eager to shed and toheave. There might not be any distressed asses found on thesetravels, but there were any number of noble savages, and there weresome very bold, up-to-date outbursts against superstition andtyranny, as the philosophers termed Christianity and Monarchy.

There was also something new about the point of view taken byRaynal and his assistants, that the various conquests of the Eastby the West were not glorious enterprises conducted by dauntlessheroes, but mere money-grubbing schemes exploited by unscrupulousfinanciers and carried out by bloodthirsty brigands. It is not onrecord that the book influenced any persons to forgo profits fromshares in Eastern trade, or to deny themselves any of the comfortsand luxuries so cruelly wrested from the oppressed inhabitants ofthe new world, but as far as talk and scribbling went Raynal hadthousands of converts; the last touch of useful publicity was givenwhen the French Parliament condemned the book. So encouraging washis success that he resolved to bring out a greatly enlargededition, and with this end in view visited England, theNetherlands, the Dutch and English Indies, collecting informationlikely to be useful to him, and was well received everywhere.

On his return to Paris he again met Elisa Draper—whoseacquaintance he had made in Bombay—wept with her over Sterne, andthen lamented (1778) the untimely loss of the lady herself. Soonafter he went to Geneva, where he was safe from the French police,and saw his second edition through the press. It was a sumptuousaffair in nine volumes, with plates and a volume of maps by thefamous M. Bonne, after Moreau Lejeune. Raynal's name was attachedto this edition, together with his portrait—"theatrical and notlike" said Grimm spitefully. Raynal was much feted in Switzerland,where he was regarded at his own valuation as an apostle ofliberty; he erected at his own expense a monument to three Swisspatriots, Fürst, Melchthal, and Stauffacher, and it was only thecaptious that ventured to remark that he had placed his own bust onthe obelisk. On his way home he stopped at Lyon, where the Academymade him an honorary member. In return for this distinction hefounded a prize—600 livres annually—for the best essay on thedifficult subject: "Has the discovery of America been reallybeneficial to mankind?"

The second edition of "The Two Indies" created a furore, and hadfor years a deep influence on sensitive, excitable, and superficialminds; the nine volumes were packed with inflammatory matter, theemphatic and pungent statements of those startling half-truths thatdazzle and mislead all but the most steady intellects. Rousseau,Sterne, Elisa were as much the vogue in 1780 as they had been in1770, and the insertion of the famous "Éloge d'Elisa" in volumeII, helped to make the Deux Indes extremely popular. Thisfamous piece of hyperbole is supposed to have been written byDiderot, but appeared again and again over Raynal's name ineditions of Sterne's "Letters" and "The Sentimental Journey."

Guibert, who had contributed to this medley himself, celebratedthe virtues of Mlle de Lespinasse under the name of Elisa—whendeath had removed poor Julie's exasperating attentions—and the twomotifs, both from Sterne, of Elisa and the dead donkey, werecombined by Mlle de Lespinasse herself in a fragment she wrote inimitation of Yorick.

This odd little composition, the first of many such spuriousepisodes in the travels of the arch-sentimentalist, illustratesvery nicely the delicacy of the difference between pathos andbathos, which Raynal never understood. It also shows the now almostincredible mental tone of the society where the Deux hideswas such a notable success.

"A milk woman has one cow, it falls sick and she sits up allnight with it: 'Art thou suffering, my Blanche? Alas, I share thypains and cannot comfort thee!' She offers the animal bread, whichit cannot take, and dropping into the popular mode of speech,exclaims: 'O Providence, canst thou look down on this and notinterfere?' Providence taking no notice, Blanche dies, and thedairy-maid, weeping, relates the tragedy to the noble lady whom sheserves; she weeps in her turn and promises to buy her cream—which,unfortunately, is not good—and tells the incident to thetraveller; he weeps also and hastens to write up the tale forElisa, who will, he is sure, also shed tears."

After this we have, in Verne's travesty, the famous L'hommeau Mouton, an individual found wandering with a lamb, abutcher's assistant, who had lost his position through refusing tokill it; the traveller, much moved, offers money, through excess ofsensibility, not to the man, but to the lamb. In this same book isthe even more touching episode of the cats which, fastened downwith outstretched tails, made a living harpsichord, each animalemitting a different yowl when his tail was pulled—one was beggedoff by the traveller, who declared that the purrs of the gratefulanimal were worth all the hollow praises of the falsemultitude.

"The self-approving hour whole worlds outweighs
Of stupid starers and of loud huzzas."

Of the same temper was that other sentimental traveller, who,losing his temper with the servant who cleaned his shoes badly, wassmitten with such remorse that his bitter tears washed his footwearclean without any further trouble.

Raynal, to whom this atmosphere of sensibility, moralising, andsentiment seems to have been very congenial, ventured on moreimportant objects for his pity than dead donkeys, cows with thecolic, rebuked servants, or ill-treated cats and dogs; he ventured,indeed, on large themes, and boldly dealt with large issues—theslave trade, the illegal, unjust seizure of the East by the West,the greed, cruelty, and corruption of priests, merchants, kings,soldiers, statesmen, from the day that Vasco da Gama sailed on hisadventurous voyage; in short "Man's inhumanity to man" was the mainargument of Raynal's book and what made it so popular. His casewas, at a first glance, unanswerable; he argued that war, conquest,slavery, superstition, moneymaking by unfair means, all oppressionof the weak by the strong, were evil.

Portuguese, Dutch, English, French, and Spaniards came severallyunder his lash, for he judged their various trading and colonisingexpeditions to have been but so many thievish raids, led bymurderers and charlatans. He lost no opportunity of violentlyattacking the class that most raised his wrath—the rulers, secularand religious, who, he contended, were responsible for centuries ofhorror and woe. In the oppressed he found much virtue; China, ofwhich huge empire he seems to have had but a slight knowledge,roused his profound admiration; he considered it a model state,though perhaps the Chinese would hardly have felt flattered by whathe thought a great compliment—that some of their philosophers wereolder than, and equal to, Descartes and Locke.

India, Hindustan, he treated with respect, if not with muchunderstanding, and those unhappy people vaguely known as "savages"had all his sympathy. It should be noted that, despite the title,the second edition deals with nearly the whole of the then knownworld, so that Raynal's survey is necessarily cursory—even withall his industry and the number of his collaborators it wasimpossible for him to deal in detail with such a subject, but hedid his best to drive home his main contention—the theory of therights of man and the practice of the wrongs of man. This wasrather different from the tone of the previous travellers' tales.Europeans had hitherto regarded the rest of the world as full ofmatter for profit, or offering objects of curiosity—that childlikecuriosity which considers everything odd that is unfamiliar.

But Raynal's line of thought was very much in the fashion, andwas at once as popular with the intellectuals and their followersas it was distasteful to those in authority. Raynal himself earnedfame and money and was much feted in Paris, where the "Éloge toElisa" in volume II put the crowning touch to that lady's fame.Slipped in between matter-of-fact accounts of the trading stationson the Malabar coast, this tearful eulogy may well be the work ofDiderot, who boasted he was the greatest "weeper" of his time.Raynal, or Diderot, whichever was the writer of this tribute, wasas sure of his own immortality as Shakespeare when penning thesonnets—no brass should outlive his powerful prose, and inconsequence the name of Elisa's birthplace "will not be obliteratedfrom the memory of man." For all time Britons would say withconscious pride: "Elisa was English."

The writer and Elisa had wept over Sterne together; if Sternehad survived, he would have wept over Elisa, and if both hadsurvived the author, both would have watered his grave withtears—indeed, "My tears will flow for Elisa as long as Ilive."

The end of the eulogy brings in the eternal fugue—the writer,under Elisa's inspiration, vows to her shade in Highest Heaven,"never to write a line unworthy of her, and always to serve thecause of Humanity, of Truth, of Liberty."

This brings us to the core of Raynal's work, of his importance,and touches on a large question that much exercises the minds ofliterary critics at the present day. We have glanced at Raynal'swork as a successful, clever piece of book-making, an example of aliterary fashion, as interesting in connection with LaurenceSterne; let us finally consider it as the very effective effort ofa social reformer—"a fanatic for humanity" who helped to goad anation into a long series of revolts against establishedauthority—revolts that began in an idealism that Raynal thoroughlyapproved and were soon degraded into an anarchy that he regardedwith alarm and horror. Raynal was the "oracle" of many of theideologues of 1789 and was considered not only the violent foe ofthe abuses of the old system, but the prophet of that new era whichnumerous ardent spirits really believed was dawning at the end ofthe eighteenth century.

While many of Raynal's dicta contain obvious truths,while much of his moral indignation is, no doubt, as sincere asforceful, his violence of expression is more notable than hisprofundity of thought, and it is difficult to realise, when readingthese melodramatic cliches, now so well-worn, how seriously theywere taken when they were fresher by large numbers of well-meaningpeople, and how this book, and such books as this, many no betterand some worse, swayed the thought and directed the aims of a wholegeneration. This opens the subject, at present much discussed, ofthe desirability of a writer's concerning himself with the moraland social problems of his own times. We have often been told,earnestly and eloquently, that all authors, not only those occupiedwith serious subjects, but even novelists, poets and playwrights,should wholly and passionately occupy themselves with theperplexities, reforms, politics, and morals of their owngeneration. Indeed, some critics hold these views so decidedly thatthey tend to ignore or to dismiss as mere "escape," romance, orday-dreaming, any book that does not deal with some disturbingaspect of modernity, which, we are gravely assured, is so much moreimportant and so much more complex than any other period has everbeen.

Thus urged and fortified, modern writers, many in good faith,many out of opportunism, pour out books that, under differentdisguises, fiction, verse, history, what you will, are in plainfact pamphleteering, full of bitter indignation against existingabuses, of contentious argument, of idealistic theories, of somekind of propaganda, or the exposition of some question of themoment. And still we are told that this is not enough, and that noone should put pen to paper who is not prepared to contribute tosome question of the day. This makes one turn with relief to musicand architecture, which must be forms of art beyond the power toscold, preach, or persuade—since as some noble wit is supposed tohave said of the Order of the Garter: "there is no damned merit"about them. Should there be, in this connection, merit aboutliterature? Is it the function of the man of letters to concernhimself as a moralist or reformer with the thousand perplexities,intricacies, bafflements, rights and wrongs of the society in whichhe finds himself? Is the professional man of letters, with hisfacility of expression, his quick observation, his power of drama,his ability to rouse emotion, his lively feeling—with all hisgifts, more or less brilliant as the case may be—is he bestemployed in meddling in matters that belong to the truephilosophers, the preachers, the men of action? It might surely beargued that he is not—that if he is a philosopher he shouldmeditate until he has something that it is worth while to teach; ifhe is a reformer he should find other means than the pen ofbringing about reforms, that if he has any constructive ability inany direction that is likely to benefit humanity, let him find anactive outlet for that ability. And if he be none of these things,but a writer—scribbler or genius—let him mind his own businessand leave propaganda, no matter how worthy, alone.

No doubt many abuses have been corrected by the efforts ofliterary people—yet one feels that those who have righted and arerighting wrong, grievances, and miseries, do not write much abouttheir ideals—they have not time. Often, too, the writer attackssome wrong already decaying through the efforts of quiet folk whohave made no fuss, and gets credit for knocking over a topplingidol. Granted, however, that much good has resulted from propagandaliterature, it is obvious that much mischief has been done. Loftyidealism, stern rules of conduct, enthusiastic theories of absoluteright and wrong, severe indictments of the mistakes and crimes ofmankind, are easily flung on paper, easily read and discussed. Thedifficulty is to make them practicable. What workable plan ofreform ever came from men who merely talked and wrote and nevertried their hands at putting their ideals into practice? Thesepaper statesmen, these pen and ink idealists, entirely lackcynicism, experience, and what Cavour named le tact de chosepossible—the sense of what it is possible to do with givenmaterials.

To admire Rousseau's moral law, his "back to nature," or thenoble savage, is reasonable enough—but to try to force theseideals on a society where it is not possible to put them intoexecution, and where they are detestable to thousands, may beextremely dangerous. "No one," said Oliver Cromwell, "goes so faras he who knows not where he is going," and windy revolutionarieslike Raynal, who could give no clear directions because they knewof none, soon found themselves swept into chaos. Raynal was not acreative artist, or even a man of great talent, so perhaps he isnot a fair example of the question how far an artist should concernhimself with morals and politics—but his once-famous book is anotable example of the powerful effect an author can have on histimes, and he lived to wish that when he had written a history ofthe two Indies he had really written a history and left themaddening questions of liberty, humanity, and truth alone.

Men of far greater ability than Raynal had wasted their talentsin these elusive causes and had succeeded only in stimulating thecrank and the fanatic and in coining catch-words for lunatics andscoundrels. Absolute art offers no support, supplies no war criesfor such as these—but in its serene detachment it offersinspiration and consolation to the truly great leader. Those men,who with the truly sincere leader have indeed battled with the realwork of the world, have been upheld and sustained by the majestyand beauty, the charm and dignity, of abstract art; to take a banalexample, General Wolfe, according to the anecdote, said that hewould rather have written Gray's Elegy than taken Quebec—he wouldnot have said that if Gray had expended his forces in writing abook to teach professional statesmen the ethics of government andprofessional soldiers the moralities and sentiments proper to theirsituation. All shades of good and evil form the material of theartist—from them he creates his own world from which we drawconsolation, or inspiration, or delight—when he descends tomeddlesome propaganda, to moralising or preaching, the less ourconsolation, our inspiration, our delight—the more that cosadivina which passes nature and becomes art is soiled andtainted.

It may also be imputed to Raynal and the school to which hebelonged that they helped, perhaps unconsciously, to destroy thearistocratic ideal in life and the classic ideal in art. A falseclassicism, founded largely on the exploits of Brutus and the worksof Plutarch, was, of course, a mania at the close of the eighteenthcentury in France, but the genuine ideals of classicism disappearedbefore the overwhelming wave of romanticism, as the genuine idealsof aristocracy disappeared before the ideals of the bourgeoisie orthe mob.

And both by classicism and aristocracy, I take it, are meantthat dignity, balance, repose, form and sense of culture—thatrestraint and good taste absent in both the romantic and realisticschools of writing, which swing from one extreme to another andproduce the same effect. It is notable that the wildly romanticschool that followed the era of sentiment and virtue—George Sandclaimed Rousseau as her master—produced much the same effect onsusceptible members of the public as does the extremely cynical,agnostic school of writers so prominent to-day. Excess ofromanticism, a longing for escape into impossible conditions ofbliss, produced disgust, despair, suicide. A performance of DeVigny's "Chatterton" was considered fiat if some youthful member ofthe audience did not attempt suicide when the stage poet tookpoison. Modern cynicism produces the same illusion of frustrationand futility—instead of the romantic's nostalgia for theunrealisable dream we have the assertion that the dream is merelyindigestion—and in each case existence, to the sensitive, seemsundermined. Surely the remedy lies in some return, both in life andin letters, to that classic or aristocratic attitude which combinesidealism with sanity, romance with intelligence, and finds in theheroic attitude that golden mean which saves us from both absurdityand despair.

Some outline of the dangers ahead was perceived by those inpower who tried, often clumsily enough, to suppress the works ofsuch men as Raynal; Louis XVI, a sincerely religious man, wasprofoundly shocked by "The Two Indies," the book was againcondemned by the Parliament of Paris, 1781, and this time burnt bythe hangman. This did not prevent the increased, if secret, salesof the book, but Raynal judged it wise to flee to Spa.

The next few years of his life the old man spent in trying toobtain the patronage of rulers whom some might have considered fitmodels for the tyrants he had so violently denounced—Frederic ofPrussia and Catherine of Russia. The King held off; he had resentedsome passages in "The Two Indies," but the Empress was pleased toadd the ex-Jesuit to her collection of curiosities. In 1791 Raynalreturned to France in the belief that a golden age which he hadhelped to ensure was about to begin—like so many ardent spirits,he was enthusiastic over the events of 1789 and honestly thoughtthat those theories that had worked out so well on paper were beingsmoothly put into easy practice. He was soon and sharplydisillusioned, and alarmed and disgusted by the spectacle of thebreak-up of that society he had so sternly condemned, addressed aletter of grim rebuke to the National Assembly. In this action theold man showed himself brave, honest, and a true prophet. Intrenchant terms he pointed out the horrors of anarchy, which wouldbe attendant on a King without power, an army without leaders, agovernment without authority. He had the rare courage to admit thathe had reconsidered many of his theories—he had realised that ingovernment it is always a question not of the ideal, but of thepossible. He believed that he had some influence with therevolutionaries whom his book had done so much to encourage orinspire, and hoped to use that influence to check a headlong rushinto a national catastrophe. It was too late.

When the letter was read there was some timid applause from themoderates—but the majority voted the old man senile and the debatecontinued.

Raynal was, however, unmolested; he survived the reign of terrorhe had predicted and died, obscure and poor, in 1796.

A very brief survey of volume I of the Geneva edition of "TheTwo Indies" will provide a fair sample of this book, which nowseems harmless to the point of tedium, but which once was soexciting and so powerful.

In the first few pages Raynal makes the assertion that he hastaken no little pains to obtain information, and that he would, ifneedful, have gone to the Equator or the North Pole to consult somecompetent authority.

With this in mind we may read on page six a description of thelost Atlantis and the obvious moral lesson of "the vanity of humanwishes." This is followed by an account of the discovery of Madeiraby the Portuguese—it was originally covered with forests, whichwere destroyed in a fire that burnt for seven years—after that thesoil became extremely fertile and produced the Malvoisiegrape. After some details of this wine trade we have some eloquentpassages devoted to India, Hindustan, Arabia, and Persia—"therichest and most beautiful continent in the world, with the mostsuperb climate, and inhabited by the most ancient race." Some ofthe mighty monuments of India provoke the reflection: "These arethe débris of an immense edifice, built by the firstcivilised people in the world, who possessed a sublime morality, aprofound philosophy, a very refined form of government."

We pass to the Portuguese trading settlements on the Malabarcoast, with the pretty list of amber, pearls, ivory, porcelain,silver, aromatics, varnishes, stuffs of silk and cotton and otherobjects of trade. On page 141 is a description of the Egyptiantrade with India, which has a charming fairy-tale air in thepicture of the preparation of incense: "Most valuable of perfumes,for the honour of the gods and the delight of Kings," followed by aclear, precise account, evidently by a botanist, of the preciousred aloe, after which we have a sudden attack on contemporaryEurope. "England torn by the interests of her Independence, Franceby the interests of her masters, Germany by those of religion,Italy by the pretensions of a tyrant and an impostor. Covered withcombatants and fanatics Europe resembles a sick man who, in amoment of delirium, tears open his veins and bleeds to death."

This confusion of crimes, of ambitions, causes us to questionRousseau's claim—"Man is born free."

A history of Turkey gives occasion for some more bittercomments: "The Turks murder their masters, but never think tochange their government," together with an attack onChristianity—"which builds the Throne on the Altar."

In referring to "the wealth of Ispahan," Raynal gives us a richvignette of the city with carpeted streets, silken sunblindsveiling the balconies, aromatic plants in vases of gold andporcelain set among Persian vines—"the most beautiful women andthe softest music of Asia." The coco-nut tree in the Moluccas isgiven three pages of earnest description and we are told that thefruit was "the manna of the desert."

The eulogy of China follows, then we pass to a history of theDutch nation and the voyages of Cornelius Houtman, a description ofthe Spice Islands and the spices and their uses; camphor, we note,helps to make fireworks and to disperse tumours; then we areintroduced to the Hottentots, Raynal's beau idéal of thenoble savage—"Fly, savages, fly! The Europeans menace your libertyand your innocence!"

There is a pleasant picture of Cape Town, with a thousandhouses, tree-bordered canal, public gardens, and forty thousandwell-treated slaves; a less pleasant picture of Batavia with itsdeadly climate, constant burning of perfumes to disperse themalarious air, and the voluptuous life that corrupted the sturdyDutch. Never anywhere else could so many women, sparkling withdiamonds, be seen riding in golden sedan chairs attended byhundreds of slaves—indeed, in 1758 there was a law passed againstthe wearing of diamonds.

A pretty detail is the account, some pages further on, of theblue and milk-white nightingales that dwell on the Cochin Chinacoast, and whose nests, made of sea-foam and frai dupoisson, are much valued for food. There is some moremoralising on the uselessness of oaths, some more practical noteson trade with China, then the first volume comes to an end with anattack on the Dutch for losing all their ancient republicanvirtues: "Batavians, the destiny of a commercial nation is to berich, cowardly, corrupt, and subjugated. Ask of yourselves if youare not all this?"

The volume is completed by the accounts of the Dutch East IndianCompany from 1720-1729.

The dust has long lain thick on Guillaume Thomas Raynal and hiswork—it has not been easy, or perhaps useful, to disturb it; asone allows it to settle again one thinks, with an irrelevancyworthy of the good abbe himself, not of his labours and hismoralising, his platitudes and his eloquence, his influence, hiserrors, but of the hooped and powdered ghost with the oval face andvivid eyes, last seen in 1830, I believe, gliding over the verandahof Belvedere House overlooking Bombay Harbour—the ghost of ElisaDraper.

EDWARD YOUNG

EDWARD YOUNG, a lesser star of the Augustan age of Englishletters, is one of those writers, a sufficient number, whose namesare familiar, whose lines are quoted, but whose works are seldomread and less seldom reprinted. Though the name of Young figuresnearly as often as the names of Shakespeare and Pope under quotedlines, I know of no edition of "Night Thoughts"* later than 1866;and even by that date the reputation of Young, once considered byserious critics to be on a level with that of Milton, hadconsiderably dwindled, and he was praised more for theunexceptional morality of his views than for the dubious qualitiesof his verse. George Eliot attacked him both as a man and as apoet, and gave the final blow to his diminished fame, and now,after so much glory and so much neglect, he takes his place as aminor poet and a rich source for the discovery of neat platitudesexpressed with a quotable flourish.

[*See Wikipedia]

It may, however, be conceded that "Night Thoughts," both initself and in the effect it produced when published, is one of thecuriosities of our literature, and that a work perhaps more widelyread and more influential in Europe than any English poem of theeighteenth century deserves a brief attention—a work, too, thathas been praised by such diverse critics as Dr. Johnson, Paine, andBulwer Lytton.

"Night Thoughts" was also in its time a staff and prop for manyafflicted and bereaved people, who found in the sonorous,passionate lines a hope and consolation that atoned for their heavygloom and morbid melancholy.

The life of Young was not of particular interest, though hemoved among the renowned and familiar figures of eighteenth-centuryLondon; the only son of a Court Chaplain, he was educated atWinchester and New College, obtained a Law Fellowship at All Souls,came to the capital, mingled with the most lively society of thetime, wrote a few very inferior poems, some plays not so inferior,satires of distinctive merit, and hunted diligently for patronagewithout notable success, for the only great man induced to give hima pension, the Duke of Wharton, went bankrupt soon after. With hiseye on the living of Welwyn in Hertford, which was in the gift ofhis College, Young disappointed in his dangling after the muses,took Holy Orders, became rector of Welwyn, and despite his moststrenuous endeavours, never achieved any post more imposing, thoughhe had been appointed one of the Royal Chaplains. He had marriedthe Lady Elizabeth Lee, a grand-daughter of Charles II, and did notlack for influential friends, including the duch*ess of Portland,Prior's "noble, lovely, little Peggy," but preferment lagged on theway, and the utmost Court favour Young ever obtained was theposition of reader to the Princess of Wales, when he was too blindto discern print and too infirm to travel to London.

He was, however, tolerably comfortable at Welwyn, where, afterthe death of his wife, he was zealously attended by a redoubtablehousekeeper, a staid, discreet, sober gentlewoman, Miss Hallows(who contrived to estrange him from his only son), and where he hadall the work of the Parish done for him by a curate on £20 ayear—hardly a generous stipend, since Welwyn was worth threehundred, the readership as much, and Young possessed other means,not, as the same curate remarked bitterly, spending half of hisincome, and being a "self-willed old man, full of trouble."

At Welwyn, after the loss of the Lady Elizabeth, hisstepdaughter and her husband, Young wrote his famous poem, andthere, in this rustic retreat, after a life varied by visits to theWells, to Bath and to Bulstrode, the Duke of Portland's mansion, hedied at a considerable age, leaving a reputation for sanctity andwisdom, and a voluminous correspondence, mostly concerned withmundane affairs and intrigues for preferment. He certainly meriteda bishopric as much as any of his contemporaries, and it isregrettable that he should have been reduced to such undignified"yelps and whines," as one critic calls his appeals, foradvancement; but when flattering a patron was the one means ofsecuring notice it can hardly be severely condemned, and fulsome asare Young's letters and dedications, they are no worse than thoseperpetrated by greater men. It was the age of the patron, and asnow authors have to secure the attention of the many, then they hadto secure the attention of the one—the appeal was more personal,more painful, but the intention, and often the method, the same.The antics performed at present in the name of publicity may seemtwo hundred years hence as absurd as do now verses that declaremiddle-aged peers to be Jupiter and Apollo combined, and depictstout, homely royal ladies being drawn upwards into seventh heavensby Lord Chancellors with purpling wings and robes of the Garter.Edward Young, witty as he was reputed to be, had no sense ofhumour, and, as Swift remarked, found no great difficulty in"flattering knaves" sooner than "lose his pension," though the Deanof St. Patrick was hardly the person who should have permittedhimself this gibe.

Young's private character was, in the parlance of those days,"respectable"; if he did not present much to admire in his conduct,he caused no scandal, and the good advice he offered had hardly anylimits; there are guarded hints of "wildness" in his youth, and abrief indulgence in the pleasures of the town in the very doubtfulcompany of the Duke of Wharton, then, however, not revealed in histrue colours. Pope says unkindly that "Young was the sport ofpeers," and Dr. Johnson allowed him genius, but denied him commonsense; whatever these early follies, Young soon extricated himselffrom any unpleasant consequences, and was eager to repudiate theDuke of Wharton when that brilliant young man came, with suchedification to the moralists, to that latter end prophesied for allwho have the hardihood to flourish like the green bay tree.

By the time that Young entered Holy Orders at the age offorty-seven he was able to support his office with dignity anddecorum, and never failed to champion the orthodox Anglicanism ofhis day by sermons, poems, letters, and excursions into thequestions of the moment, as when he rushed into verse to slash hisold acquaintance, Voltaire, for Candide:

"Why close a life so justly famed
With such bold trash as this?
This for renown! yes, such as makes
Obscurity a bliss!"

and when he roused himself, in his extreme old age, to write"The Centaur not Fabulous," a counterblast to Bolingbroke'sposthumous atheism. Nor is there any reason to doubt that hiscopious eloquence in the cause of Christianity (as understood inthe eighteenth century) was sincere; nor to undervalue his beliefin the immortality of the soul because he was careful of thecomforts of the body; nor to doubt his faith in the next worldbecause he was solicitous of a good place in this. He appears tohave had a passion for preaching as another of his age might have apassion for collecting coins or growing tulips, and to have foundthe propounding of moral axioms more absorbing than the mostagreeable of pleasures. He delighted in laying down rules ofconduct, admonishing wickedness, pointing out the brevity of humanexistence, the approach of the Judgment Day and the certainty ofHell for the disbeliever; and he dwelt on these subjects with acopiousness that caused the most well-trained congregation to nodand the most austere of divines to murmur that the good doctor"overflowed his banks." A sermon he preached before King George IIcaused such obvious restiveness on the part of His Majesty that thedisappointed Young burst into tears; this unfortunate episode mayhave been the cause of his lack of preferment. Nor is this the onlyincident that makes us suspect that Young, for all his remarkablegifts, was, on occasion, a bore; a great deal of his work iscertainly unreadable save as a curiosity or an exercise inpatience, and were it not for the first four "Nights" might bedeservedly consigned to a cabinet of curiosities.

But these poems and their influence are sufficiently remarkableto warrant some attention from the student of literature.

The age in which Young lived was peculiarly rich in great andnearly great writers. Pope, Addison, Steele, Swift, Johnson,Fielding, Gay, Shenstone, and Richardson—Young's most intimatefriend—come at once to the mind, and at Winchester with the authorof the "Night Thoughts" was John Philips, who revived in "Cyder"and "The Splendid Shilling" the Miltonic iambics, and at NewCollege with him was William Collins and Louis, the brother ofColley Cibber, and the brothers Warton, one of whom, Joseph,afterwards dedicated to Young his essay on Pope; Gray andGoldsmith, Macpherson and Chatterton, were among the poets whosecareers were contemporary with the old age of Young, whose longlife stretched from the full blaze of Dryden, the neo-classic orAugustan school, to the dawn of romanticism; with this transitionour poet was in some way concerned.

His earlier pieces are in no way valuable, but in his "Satires,"which brought him in a considerable sum, he preceded Pope in thisgenre, small character sketches in pompous, heroic couplets, fullof Latinisms, in which he held up well-known types to scorn; thesesatiric pieces on the classic model followed Joseph Hall—thesaintly Bishop of Norwich—Donne and Dryden in their imitations ofHorace and Juvenal. The victims are, of course, as old ashumanity—the rake, the miser, the slu*t, the hypocrite—and thoughneat and full of trenchant lines, the Satires do not pretend to bepoetry and can hardly be accepted as literature. The third Satire,where he indulges in the old grievance of author against critic, isthe most amusing:

"'Your work is long,' the critic cries. 'Tistrue,
And lengthens still to take in fools like you—
Good authors damn'd have their revenge in this
To see what wretches gain the praise they miss—"

And Young concludes with a spirited attack on the newspaper menalmost as trenchant as Pope's "There's nothing blackens like theink of fools":

"Critics on verse, as squibs on triumph wait,
Proclaim the triumph and augment the state.
Hot, envious, noisy, proud, the scribbling fry
Burn, hiss, and bounce, waste paper, stink and die."

Young next tried for success on the Stage, and though he admiredShakespeare and professed to wish to revive the noble virility ofthe Elizabethan dramatists, he is more the disciple of Lee andOtway, and was definitely influenced by the French classic school."Busiris" and "The Brother's Revenge" are fine examples of thedrama when "declamation raged, while passion slept"; everyone is ina fury, shouting all others down, while there are "crimes giganticstalking through the gloom," vast emotions clash against oneanother, heroines "go mad in white satin," villains gnash theirteeth, roll their eyes, heroes protest their heroism in pages ofblank verse.

"Exit raving" is the usual stage direction, and the wholemachinery of Heaven and Hell is provoked because two rococowarriors are striving for the same pasteboard crown or the same"fatal fair," whose icy virtue does not permit her to state apreference; "loud sorrows howl, envenomed passions bite." There isa certain grandiose flourish in the design and many rich beautiesin the detail, but the whole effect is as bombastic as a paintingby Verrio or Thornhill, and did not escape the ridicule even ofthat baroque period; Young's tragedies provoked the satire of HenryFielding and Henry Carey (author of "Sally in Our Alley"); "TomThumb" and "Chrononhotonthologos" exposed the ranting andgesticulating of these beplumed and buskined tyrants; it wasdifficult, however, to satirise such grotesques, and Bombardinianappears more like the twin brother than the caricature ofBusiris.

Despite the wits, Young's plays were often revived and lastedfor a respectable period, and it must be admitted that they were atleast no worse than many dramas both in England and abroad thatwere constantly played to admiring audiences. "Say it in thunder"roared one of Young's characters in a line stolen from Mrs. AphraBeim, and the pert George Anne Bellamy, the actress, remarked thatone might as well add "in lightning" too, "thunder and lightning"would have been no inapt name for this remarkable school ofneo-classic drama, already tinged by the disturbed gloom of thecoming romanticism.

When he took Orders, Young, with his eye on a bishopric, thoughtit politic to cease these efforts to entertain the profane, and wehear no more of his literary labours until 1742, when Dodsleypublished at the famous sign of Tully's Head in St. James's Streeta slim volume at 1s., with blue paper covers showing aclergyman seated among the tombs, meditating by the light of themoon, and entitled "Night Thoughts, or the Complaint."

Young, now an elderly, a bereaved and a disappointed man, wasthe anonymous author, and it was in Welwyn, the scene of the deathof his beloved wife and the extinction of his worldly hopes, thathe had composed the only poem of his that is likely to beremembered.

Several influences had combined to inspire Young. He was of amelancholy temperament; at Winchester he had pondered over theepitaphs in the cloisters and worked by the light of a candle in askull, and he had been shocked by the loss of several people dearto him; the state of medicine then gave everyone an opportunity ofnoting the uncertainty and brevity of life. He had also been rousedby Pope's "Essay on Man," that brilliant patchwork founded on thenew metaphysics of Leibnitz, then displacing those of Descartes.The German had corrected the Cartesian "fundamental ideas" of manto "fundamental faculties" of man. This theory, tinged with thephilosophies of Bolingbroke, had inspired "The Essay on Man," whichpreached a practical optimism that, if it did not quite reachVoltaire's ironic "all for the best in the best of all possibleworlds," at least tried to prove that it was as well to make themost of this existence since we were sure of no other, leaving themysteries we cannot fathom in the hands of a no doubt merciful God.Pope, in the main, as far as he was consistent at all, preached thepagan philosophy:

"Enjoy your life, my brother,
Is gray old Reason's song;
One has so little while to live
And one is dead so long."

Such a doctrine, however piously expressed, seemed to Younglittle short of blasphemy, and in "Night Thoughts" he passionatelyproclaimed that life was either a series of errors or a series ofpenances, and that the unescapable result was in the first caseHell and in the second Heaven. The main thesis of the poem was theimmortality of the soul, and the main novelty the introduction ofthe personal note, so long absent from English verse; obscurely andunder feigned names the poet lamented his own losses and drew hisown consolations. For these two reasons and because of a glowinggrandeur in the imagery, the poem was immediately successful andthe melancholic, romantic school fairly launched. Though thematter, fear of death and hope of a future existence, scorn offolly and praise of virtue, was as old as human thought, it hadnever been quite presented in this way before in English verse. TheElizabethan attitude, for example, on one of the main themes ofYoung—contemplation of death—is different indeed, as is expressedin the stately impersonal lines of Francis Beaumont:

"The Wind blows out, the Bubble dies;
The Spring entombed in Autumn lies;
The Dew's dried up; the Star is shot;
The Flight is past, and Man forgot,"

which seem an echo of the Psalmist's "For he considered thatthey were but flesh; and that they were even as a wind that passethaway and cometh not again." The lovely resignation of GeorgeHerbert in "I made a Posie," where he says:

"Farewell, dear flowers, sweetly your time ye spent,
Fit, while ye lived, for smell or ornament
And after death for cures.
I follow straight without complaint or grief,
Since if my scent be good, I care e not if
It be as short as yours,"

the noble submission of Raleigh in his "Oh, eloquent, just andmighty Death" in his prose, and "Even such is time" in his verse,to mention but two other poets who touched these universal themes,were different indeed from the flowing rhapsodies of Young; and thegrand meditations of Thomas Browne and the classic calm ofMontaigne's "May death find me, not unmindful of his dart, buttending my cabbages" found no echo in the exclamatory periods ofthe rector of Welwyn, when he surveyed "Earth's melancholy map."Thomas Parnell, vicar of Finglass and friend of Pope, who died in1718, had already written "A Night Piece on Death," but it had nothad much effect and can hardly be regarded as a forerunner ofYoung. There was, too, a hundred years before Young, the "Death" ofCharles Drelincourt, famous from Defoe's Mrs. Veal preface,but the French minister's work has not the inspiration of theEnglish poet.

The design of the poem was complete in four "Nights," but Young,like many another, was tempted by the vogue he had himself createdto outrun his own inspiration—he expanded the poem to nine"Nights," and the last five are of little value, and in parts dullindeed; but it was reasonable that he should wish to continue hisown vein, for it had instantly been exploited by others—RobertBlair produced "The Grave," Harvey "Meditations among the Tombs,"where he left the churchyard as not sufficiently gloomy anddescended to the vaults to compose his diatribes, which are writtenin an ornate prose in Young's style. Churchyards promised to be asfashionable a vogue as routs or masques, and skulls and cross-bonesas popular as ribbons and laces.

"Clarissa Harlowe" was published immediately after "NightThoughts," and the drawn-out death-bed agonies of Clarissa, hercoffin adorned with designs of broken lilies, may have beeninspired by the author of "Night Thoughts," the friend ofRichardson. In a few years followed the melancholy, elegantperfection of Gray's Elegy and the wild gloom of Ossian; and thevogue of brooding despair and dreary lamentations spread withastonishing celerity on the Continent. Before glancing at thisforeign fashion of melancholy a brief survey may be taken of a poemthat had so wide and continuous an influence.

Young in "Night Thoughts" was the poetical disciple of Thompson,who, through John Philips, had turned to the Miltonic iambics;Thompson had referred to "virtuous Young," and they shared twopossible patrons, Lord Melcombe and Lord Wilmington. Our firstlandscape poet had turned the attention of his contemporaries fromthe heroic couplet of Dryden and Pope to the blank verse of Milton,Dr. Young also refused "to dance in fetters," as Prior termedwriting in rhyme, and copied the manner of the author of "TheSeasons"; he could not copy his flowing polish, the delicacy of histouch, the purity of his taste, which shows through all theponderous Latinisms of the day; he was incapable of such lovelinessas the delicious episodes of Musidora or Lavinia:

"The lovely young Lavinia once had friends,
And fortune smiled, deceitful, on her birth,"

where the classic figures seem no more out of place in theseairy, golden landscapes than do the nymphs and shepherds in theperspectives of Claude Gelée or the Greek temples in a canvas byWilson:

"Where scattered wild the Lily of the Vale
Its balmy essence breathes, where cowslips hang
Their dewy head, where purple violets lurk."

Young's metre is full of faults; he had studied Milton, but tono great purpose; he could not escape the lure of the neat couplet,the pause at the end of every line, the effective quotable sentenceand such ornaments as antithesis, alliteration and metaphor,useless return of the verb, ornament carried to excess. He wasnever so inspired as to rise above a certain gaudiness ofexpression, or so disciplined as to be able to control a cascade ofimages falling one on the other in glittering confusion. In thewhole of the "Nights" there is nothing so clear, so human, and sohappy as Pope's lines in the rival poem, beginning:

"Lo! the poor Indian! Whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears Him in the wind,"

and ending with the exquisite:

"To be content's his natural desire,
He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire,
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company."

It is often difficult to know what Young means to say, yet it isnot often that the ear fails to be pleased with the sonorousgrandeur with which he gilds his passionate incoherencies.

"Night Thoughts" is too well known for it to be needful here toenter into a description of it or a consideration of who wereLorenzo, Philander, or Narcissa—in all likelihood compositeportraits; the purpose of the poem is didactic (a contradiction interms), in reality one long exhortation to the thoughtless toremember the brevity of life and to prepare for death as anentrance into bliss. As usual in such moralising little is said ofthis same bliss; it is a merc distant gleam, illusive as a marshfire, and all the emphasis of the poet is laid on the horrors ofthis life, the glooms of death and the grave, the terrors of theJudgment Day, and the swift punishments in store for those who failto realise that to enjoy oneself is a crime and to indulge inworldy pursuits a stupidity. "Incredulity," the dying Diderotexclaimed, "is the beginning of all philosophy." Young thoughtcredulity the beginning of all religion; one must believe blindlyin a future state where only the model Christian shall besaved.

The good doctor, in brief, did not hold with the dictum ofVauvenargues that "one has no right to render unhappy those onecannot render good"—and dressing up a lay figure in the person ofLorenzo, the man of the world and pleasure, he proceeds to preachand scold at his gaudy puppet till the reader longs to hear Lorenzoquote Sir Toby Belch: "Dost thou think because thou art virtuousthere shall be no more cakes and ale?"

But that appears to be exactly what Young, if he did not think,hoped; he was, with Dryden:

"Tired of waiting for the Chymic gold,
Which fools us young and beggars us when old,"

and by no means disposed to view with indulgence a world thathad been so blind to his own merits. He also suffered from that oddlack of sympathy with vice which is the most unpleasant trait ofsome types of virtue, and that ancient delusion that the period inwhich he lived—"the dregs of time"—was unsurpassed forwickedness. Refusing Congreve's common sense:

"For virtue now is neither more nor less
And vice is only varied in its dress"—

he believed that the reign of the first two Georges was an epochof scandal, corruption, atheism, folly, disorder, and suicide neverparalleled before; to him:

"The flattered crimes of a licentious age
Reproach our silence and demand our rage."

Subsequent historians also have taken this view, but save forsome change in manners it is difficult to credit that theeighteenth century was different from any other century, and thatthe crimes and follies lashed by Young are not the crimes andfollies of all time. In many directions the years when "NightThoughts" appeared are full of interest: Royalty had recently stoodto hear the Hallelujah Chorus in Handel's "Messiah" performed forthe first time; William Collins was writing those odes, unique inour language, which lament those fallen in the long tedious war inwhich a King of England for the last time led his troops in person;the Stewart cause was gathering for its final overthrow at CullodenMoor; William Hogarth was designing the pictures that were to foundthe English school of painting; and the odd genius of Richardsonhad just provoked Henry Fielding to write the first modern Englishnovel.

None of these things interested Edward Young; he merely saw"stalled theology" too comfortable in high places, Court corruptionand the gambling, drinking, wantonness of the idle youth of thenation; Lorenzo, the villain of "Night Thoughts," is the TomRakewell of "The Rake's Progress," the Lord Squanderfield of"Marriage à la Mode" soon to be designed, the Robert Lovelace of"Clarissa" just published, the Lord Euston and Duke of Wharton ofreal life; in short, Lorenzo is the personification of thatbeautiful, proud, and careless youth, garlanded with earthlypleasures, arrogant in strength of body and power of intellect, whois so attractive that even the moralist who attacks him must dwellon his splendours with secret admiration. Through "Night Thoughts,"as through so many didactics on this theme, rims the note ofregret, of envy for what is so magnificent, so transitory, thereruns also the note of malice, the desire to destroy the likeness ofthe pomps that have been missed, the lusts that have been outworn;with relish does the old man consign the sparkling youth to:

"A state
Not unambitious; in the ruffled shroud,
Thy Parian tomb's triumphant arch beneath,"

and yet he must linger on the joy and pride and passion hecondemns, "the fopperies of fortune," all the adornments of "thisprisoner of earth, pent beneath the moon."

"Lorenzo, Fortune makes her court to thee,
Thy fond heart dances, while the siren sings,"

and again:

"—well may Life
Put on her plume and in her rainbow shine."

Young dwells on the "vast concerns of an eternal scene," and themoment when "the sun is darkness and the stars are dust," but hecannot resist the fascination of youth, pride, beauty whose

"Glossy plumes
Expanded shine with azure, green and gold."

Lorenzo might be:

"Smothered with errors, and oppressed withtoys,"

but his sparkling earthly radiance outshines the fancifulhorrors of the moralist. The lamentations and reproaches addressedto this unbelieving rake and the lost Narcissa are clothed in arichness of imagery that probably went far to secure the success ofthe poem; frequent dark landscapes are sketched that have norelation to the scenes Young must have viewed round Welwyn, butmore resemble one of those black and sulphurous compositions bySalvator Rosa. Here, as in his earlier verse, Young provides allthe stage properties inherited by the neo-Gothic School fromWalpole to Mrs. Radcliffe and Maturin; here are the rocks, grottos,mossy ruins, owls, groves, charnel-houses, skulls, "the funerealvale," "the sad cypress gloom" and howling winds, midnight hours,"the ghastly ruins of the mouldering tomb" and "the poor worms"soon to be so familiar in a section of our literature, and here,too, are some terrific pictures of the Last Judgment, a favouritesubject with Young, which might have inspired the imposingconceptions of Gustave Dore and John Martin; here, as in his plays,Young employs the grandest images possible, sun, moon, starscurdling into vapour or dissolving into dust, eternal trumpetssplitting the sky, legions of fiends and angels and the earthreeling in chaos. This, if not sublime, as it is meant to be, is atleast impressive—like the decorations at Versailles, Young'scrowded lines may be stucco, but they are good stucco, heroicallymoulded and adorned with a rich if gaudy ornament.

Sumptuously, for instance, does he describe the commonexperience of day-dreaming in this couplet:

"How richly were my noontide trances hung
With gorgeous tapestries of pictured joys!"

And how magnificent this description of night visions:

"What, tho' my Soul phantastic Measures trod,
O'er Fairy Fields; or mourn'd along the gloom
Of pathless Woods; or down the craggy Steep
Hurl'd headlong, swam with pain the mantled Pool;
Or scal'd the cliff; or danc'd on Hollow Winds,
With antic Shapes, wild Natives of the Brain?"

The single lines are very well known—best of all perhaps theopening line of the First Night:

"Tir'd Nature's sweet restorer, Balmy Sleep."

Then others—forcible and just:

"Strong Reason's shudder at the Dark Unknown."
"Love of fame is Avarice of Air."
"Who cheapens Life abates the fear of Death."
"Virtue alone outlasts the Pyramids."
"'Tis vain to seek in man for more than man"—

and many other similar lines, which have passed into thelanguage, though it is sometimes not remembered that Young wrotethem.

The following lines give a fair idea of Young's power ofcreating a grand image, and are not marred by many of his usualfaults:

"The Nameless He, whose nod is Nature's birth;
And Nature's shield, the shadow of His hand;
Her dissolution, his suspended smile;
The great first last! Pavilioned high he sits
In Darkness, from excessive splendour torn,
By Gods, unseen unless, through lustre lost.
His glory, to created glory lights,
As that, to central horrors; He looks down
On all that soars; and spans Immensity."

Despite the extreme gloom of the poem (Pope suggested "Go hangthyself" as a motto for it) it became popular immediately, and theinfluence of "Night Thoughts" spread in Young's own country downfrom Goldsmith to Cowper and to the sombre misery of Kirke White,with his extremely melancholy "Dance of Consumptives among theGraves," "where troops of squalid spectres play," and wherereferences to "eves of Death," "chilling damps," "vain illusions ofdeceitful life," "mid-night ghosts" evoke the very air of "NightThoughts," while the fragment, "Written in Prospect of Death,"might almost be from the hand of Young. There was, however, apathetic difference in the writers—Henry Kirke White was a youngand dying man when he woke "to watch the sickly taper that lightsme to my tomb," while Young was old and healthy when he darkenedlife by fears of death. The early work of Lord Byron, who refers toYoung and had evidently studied "Night Thoughts," was notunaffected by the glooms of the rector of Welwyn, whose poem,illustrated twice, by the wild uncouth pencil of William Blake andthe insipid prettiness of Thomas Stothard's graver, was still inactive circulation in the early years of the nineteenthcentury.

Several English poems were indebted to the "Night Thoughts" notonly for their mood and colouring, but even for actual lines, suchas Goldsmith's "Edwin and Angelina"

"Man wants but little here below
Nor wants that little long,"

which is Young's

"Man wants but little, nor that little long."

"The Task" is obliged, in a like manner, to "Night Thoughts,"and there is another quotation in "The Parish Register."

Gray's famous line:

"And waste its sweetness on the desert air,"

seems an echo of one of Young's satires:

"And waste their music on the savage race."

An article in the Literary Gazette, 1821, pointed outmany lines in "The Corsair" and "Manfred" that almost repeat theactual words of Young, as "Sorrow is knowledge," Byron's form of"Knowing is suffering," and "That hideous sight, a naked humanheart," which in Byron becomes "That open sepulchre, the nakedheart." Even "In Memoriam" contains similar echoes, as "In thywisdom make me wise," which is near to "And teach your wisdom to bewise." A most erudite critic of Edward Young, Dr. Thomas, has evenseen in Lady Clara Vere de Vere's:

"Oh teach the orphan boy to read!
Or teach the orphan girl to sew,"—

an echo of Young's:

"Do some generous good,
Teach Ignorance to see or grief to smile."

Certainly John Keble's famous first line:

"Sun of my Soul, Thou Saviour dear"—

is very similar to Young's:

"Sun of the soul, her never setting sun."

In France the influence of Young was even more remarkable; itappears to echo in the "A quoi bon?" of Julie de Lespinasse, themuse of the encyclopaedists themselves, who probably liked Young aswell as the admired "Clarissa," and by 1770 Letourneur'stranslation was so successful that "Youngisme" became a phrase, anda contemporary verse declared:

"Les crêpes de Young se mêlent
Parmi les pompons de toilette."

Camille Desmoulins read Young and Harvey (their works werepublished in one volume) the night before his execution, andanother victim of the Revolution of 1789, Andre Chénier, was movedto protest against the immense influence "of the frenzied Englishdespair." The popularity of the book continued, however, into thenineteenth century, and translation followed translation, andimitation imitation. The vogue was at last checked by thecondemnations of Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael, thoughChateaubriand himself had once felt the influence of Young. Theshadow of "Night Thoughts" falls on Lamartine, the poem was readby, if it did not affect, De Vigny, Balzac, and De Musset.

In Italy the success and effect of "Night Thoughts" were no lessnotable; the edition of 1771 was honoured with a preface by thatsupremely gracious imperial poet, the Abbé Pietro Metastasio, and,apart from the many minor versifiers powerfully affected by theblack gorgeous gloom of the Englishman, may be cited IppolitoPindemonte's "Dei Sepolcri," with greater names, those of UgoFoscolo and Giacomo Leopardi, whose melancholy muses appear to havebeen directly inspired by Young's funereal meditations; one ofLeopardi's poems also is entitled "Night Thoughts."

Ugo Foscolo, that most noble and unfortunate of patriots andpoets, also was in his earlier work, notably in his "Sepolcri,"dedicated to the memory of Parini, and in "Jacopo Ortis" distinctlyinspired by the pessimism of Young.

"Night Thoughts" was translated also into Portuguese, Castilianand Russian; in Russia the poem appeared in ten different editionsand is supposed to have encouraged the gloom of Pushkin; a Dutchedition inspired William Bellamy and Van Haren, and theScandinavian languages also gave their three different versions ofthe sombre compositions of the rector of Welwyn, which werepublished also in Icelandic, Polish, and Hungarian.

In Germany the effect of these lugubrious poems was tremendous:they were warmly welcomed by Klopstock, whose "Messiah" began toappear in 1748. Meta, Klopstock's beloved wife, passionatelyrevered Young and thought he deserved the Archbishopric ofCanterbury. Johann Evald, the lofty, exquisite and unhappy Danishpoet, died with a copy of the "Messiah" under his pillow, and was,through Klopstock, influenced by Young. Published in a Germantranslation in 1751, "Night Thoughts" was immediately a fashion;Teutonic imitations of Young sprang up thick and fast, like fungion the damp graves of Welwyn, and the gloom of Young tinged thework of Jean Paul Richter, Herder, Lessing, inspired Friedrich vonHardenberg, known as "Novalis," to write "Hymns to Night,"influenced Hoffmann and Goethe, and helped the Rousseauan "returnto Nature movement." The "Sorrows of Werther" are, in a sense, thesorrows of Edward Young; Ossian, whose vogue at first ran side byside with that of "Night Thoughts," at last eclipsed the earlierpoem in Germany, but not before this atmosphere of pessimism andregret had permeated the whole of German literature, one mightindeed add, the whole of European literature, for it is hardlyfantastic to trace in the disenchanted romanticism, the sombrefancies, the wailing laments, the dreary disgust for earthlypleasures so notable in the work of writers of the late eighteenthand early nineteenth century, the attitude of "loathing life, andblack with more than melancholy views" of Edward Young, though hehad long since, in his own words, had to "toss fortune back hertinsel and her plume," and admit:

"My world is dead;
A new world rises and new manners come,
Foreign Comedians, a spruce band, arrive,
To push me from the scene, or hiss me there."

7. MARY STEWART, QUEEN OF SCOTLAND

MARY STEWART was not in herself a very remarkable woman, but hercirc*mstances made her appear so. There is no indication in hercharacter that she would have become notable by reason of her ownpersonal qualities. Fair, high-spirited, indiscreet, and ardentwomen were common enough in the aristocracy of the Renaissance,have been common enough in any sheltered, idle, luxurious class. Ofpolitical acumen, of elevated patriotism, of selfless, far-seeingdevotion to a cause or to an ideal, Mary Stewart showed no trace.Her little accomplishments of verse-making, lute-playing, dancing,fine needlework, have largely to be taken on trust and, at best,could have been matched by any well-bred lady of her time. Herseductive charm has become largely fabulous; the authority for itrests in great part on the studied eulogies of courtiers, or thetributes of men like Brantôme, writing in their old age of youthfulmemories. Her few authentic portraits give us no more than that"pleasing face of a gentlewoman," which was John Knox's descriptionof his sovereign's countenance.

But because she was placed in such an extraordinary situation,because her story contains the crude elements of apparent romance,love episodes, murders, imprisonments, escapes, plots, a violentdeath, legends have clustered thickly round her personality; shehas been dramatised and sentimentalised until it is extremelydifficult to see her even with that small degree of truth which isthe most we can hope for when looking back at the great figures ofhistory.

The most important parts of her story are obscure, and willalways be matter for controversy among the many, and for fanaticbitterness and acrid partisanship among the few.

Mary Stewart was of importance politically because of herposition, and not because of her character or attainments. As Queenof one country and heiress to another she was, all her life, ofgreat interest to European statesmen, and during the last years ofher imprisonment she became a very powerful factor in the RomanCatholic effort to effect a counterreformation in England; it hasbeen said, probably without exaggeration, that the whole ofElizabeth Tudor's policy revolved round Mary of Scotland. It hasalso been said, with equal truth, that Mary's failures—her almostincredible misfortunes—resided within herself; she had not thequalities necessary for success in a position of bewildering andintricate difficulty. We may admit as much, but we should alsoconcede that very few women indeed would have been able to succeedwhere Mary failed. It is doubtful if any Roman Catholic girl ofnineteen, foreign-bred, without disinterested advisers, could haveachieved the task of ruling well and wisely the Protestant Scotlandthat Mary found when she landed at Leith in 1561. It is perhaps notlikely that many women in Mary's position would have made theterrible mistake of marrying a man implicated in the murder of ahusband, but, on the other hand, it is extremely unlikely that anywoman, trying to queen it in Holyrood, would have escaped someamorous entanglement, some snare of bloody violence that would havebrought her to ruin as swiftly as the Rizzio, Darnley, Bothwellimbroglio brought Mary to disaster. If her imprudence seemsstartling, it is probably because we do not sufficiently realiseher background or the atmosphere in which she moved. This typicalwoman of the late Renaissance is too often viewed either in thefairy-tale light of legend, or through the sentimental pages ofnineteenth-century refinement.

The first step towards understanding Mary is to understand herperiod; she was neither the heroine of a ballad, nor a Victorianlady in distressing circ*mstances. Nor was she that poeticconception, an ethereal creature seeking an ideal lover andcontinually betrayed by love. Her choice of husbands seems stupidbeyond belief, until we consider the men who surrounded her, themen who were offered to her as possible lovers or consorts. Heractions were those of a woman always tormented, often desperate,driven by circ*mstances and her own temperament into horribledifficulties, and extricating herself by the wit, courage, andfalsehood, born of necessity. Stripped of the trappings given it byfiction-writers and poets, her story is neither noble norbeautiful, nor, in the true sense of the word, romantic. Themotives of all concerned in her downfall, and as far as we knowthem, her own, were too brutal and sordid for her tragedy to havereal dignity or pathos. Even if she were as brilliantly innocent asher most fanatic admirers would have us believe she was, herconduct during the crisis of her fortunes was too wilful, foolish,and opportunist to be really admirable or moving. Her royalposition demanded an impossible virtue, a self-respect, aself-control, a fortitude, and a dignity that no young woman couldhave been expected to possess, but Mary's behaviour felldisastrously below even a moderate standard of queenly decorum. Itwas the old story of Caesar's wife; what did it matter if she wasreally spotless?—she gave cause for a blaze of scandal inEurope and was cast out of her own country, despoiled ofeverything, to the last shred of reputation. Nor was she wholly thevictim of the lies of her rivals and enemies; even the impartialobserver, the friendly well-wisher might, in all honesty, havethought that it was a murderess, an adulteress, a treacherous liar,that fled across the Solway after the Langside defeat in 1568. DuCroc, the French ambassador, who was desirous, from every point ofview, of championing Mary, observed that her personal appeal to theKing of France would be of little avail—"since the unhappy factsare too well known." Those, then, who had cause to dislike or tofear the Queen of Scots had plenty of excuse for violently decryingher, and the plain man and woman every reason for regarding thediscrowned ruler with doubt and suspicion.

Imprisonment and death were, in this age, the consequences ofpolitical failure—they were also the punishments for domesticcrime. Mary had not succeeded in ruling Scotland, and she couldhardly have hoped to escape the penalty her ancestors had paid forfailure in the same task. As a woman she had recklessly misjudgedand mishandled her affairs, and as a private person, could not haveexpected to escape censure and punishment. Her only chance ofescape from being damaged by embarrassing charges would have lainin her strength as a ruler; a Sophie of Anhalt, with a Potemkin byher side, might have lived down or glossed over a scandal like Kirko' Field. But Mary was a weak, a dethroned sovereign, and thereforecould not afford to disregard conventional standards of morality.What protection, what measure of safety she had, she owed to hersole possession—the name of Queen. If, like Alice Arden, she hadbeen arraigned with her lover for murder of her husband before anEnglish jury, her fate would surely have been the same as that ofthe murderous wife of Faversham. She was fortunate that, as a Queenwho had made a headlong failure of politics, she escaped by flightthe instant vengeance of her enemies, and fortunate that, as awoman, she was never put on trial for her supposed crimes, butallowed to die when these were almost forgotten, and changedcirc*mstances had given her the dignity of a martyr.

So much warm sympathy and tender sentiment have been expendedover Mary Stewart, the facts of her long imprisonment and violentdeath seem in themselves so atrocious, there is something sotouching in the slow wearing away of her youth and beauty inhopeless pining, that to consider her case logically is to beadjudged hard, or prejudiced in favour of Protestantism and QueenElizabeth. If, however, any attempt is to be made to present aneven partially true portrait (the whole truth will surely be forever concealed) of this much-discussed character, the pity allowedto the poet, the championship permitted to the novelist, must bediscarded. Mary's appeal, of femininity, of beauty, of misfortune,is wholly to the heart, and the heart is a bad guide for thehistorian.

Mary's life was, from first to last, dramatic and unfortunate;she was born in 1542 a week before her father, James V, died at theage of thirty in Falkland Castle, overwhelmed by the disastrousrelationship with England that had culminated in the defeat of theScots at Solway Moss, November, 1542. James V was directlydescended from Robert the Steward (reigned 1371-90); the Kings ofthis House had all been able men, quite the equals of contemporarysovereigns; their misfortunes, the violent deaths of many of them,might be ascribed to long minorities, the power of the Barons, thefiery independent spirit of the Scots and the rudeness of thetimes, rather than to any marked incapacity of their own. James IV(reigned 14881513) was a notable Prince, under whose rule Scotlandflourished in what was afterwards regarded as a Golden Age; he wasa great builder, a founder of three Universities, a patron ofliterature, an ambitious ruler. He married Margaret, daughter ofHenry VII (1503), and was slain fighting against the forces of hisbrother-in-law at Flodden (1513). This King was Mary Stewart'sgrandfather; from his wife, Margaret Tudor, Mary derived thedangerous claim to the English throne, which was the root of mostof her grandeur and most of her troubles. During the minority ofJames V (1513-1542) this Queen-Mother Margaret complicated theclaims to the Scottish succession by marrying and then divorcingthe turbulent Earl of Angus, to whom she bore a daughter, Margaret,afterwards married to Mathew Stewart, Earl of Lennox.

James V married in succession two French princesses; the "auldalliance" with France was a strong element in Scottish policy, andthe menacing attitude of Henry VIII did much to strengthen thisancient connection. Mary Stewart was the only child to surviveinfancy of the second marriage, that of James V with Mary of Guise,daughter of the great House of Lorraine and widow of the Duc deLongueville.

The dispute that had led to Solway Moss was caused by an attempton the part of Henry VIII to force his nephew to set up the tenetsof the Reformation in Scotland, to defy the Pope and despoil themonasteries, which had absorbed an enormous share of the country'swealth. James V, however, was a sincere Roman Catholic, and hisprincipal adviser was David Beaton, the Cardinal Archbishop of St.Andrews. This strong and able prelate was the principal adviser tothe widowed Mary of Guise, and crowned the infant Queen a yearafter her father's death. The Regent was the heir-presumptive tothe throne, the head of the Hamiltons, the Earl of Arran. Thisnobleman was inclined to Protestantism and the English alliance,and Mary, despite her mother's opposition, would have beenbetrothed to Prince Edward (Edward VI), had not King Henry's termsbeen couched in a manner completely insulting to the proud Scots.Upon the breaking off of the marriage treaty (1543) Henry VIIIinvaded and devastated Scotland; for six years (1544-1550) the war(continued after Henry's death, 1547, by the Protector Somerset)harried the Scots with every horror of fire and sword. The littleQueen, in the safe retreats of Inchmahome and Dumbarton, livedpeacefully in the midst of these turmoils; her mother and Beatonleaned naturally to the French alliance, and in 1548 Mary, with anelegant retinue and the little playmates who bore her name, wassent to France to be educated by her maternal grandmother, theaustere and virtuous Antoinette de Bourbon, and her celebrateduncles, the soldier Prince and the Cardinal Prince of the powerfuland ambitious House of Guise.

Mary was warmly received by the King of France, Henri II, andfrom what we know of the childhood that she spent mostly on thefine estates of Joinville, it was happy, uneventful, and full ofpromise. The child who was in such an exalted and strange positionwas praised by all as lovely, charming, docile, and accomplished.Two lessons, at least, her Guise relations taught her—a firmadherence to her hereditary faith and an intense pride ofbirth.

While the young Queen was growing up under the influence of thehaughty members of the House of Lorraine, her mother wasendeavouring to stem the rising forces of Protestantism inScotland. Lutheranism had for some years begun to attract thesturdy spirit of the Scottish commoner, and the nobles looked withgreedy eyes on the swollen possessions of the Church. TheGovernment was weak, and outbursts of fanaticism roused and focusedpopular discontents. Cardinal Beaton had been murdered (in revengefor the death of the Protestant, George Wishart), in his own castletwo years before Mary went to France; John Knox was with hismurderers, who were sent to the galleys in 1548; after nineteenmonths of this slavery he was released by English intercession,resided for a while at the court of Edward VI, then retired toGeneva and the counsels of Jean Calvin. By 1555 Knox, a furiousfirebrand of a man, was back in Scotland rejoicing over the rapidlyincreasing power of Protestantism. To counteract this EnglishProtestant tendency, Henri II induced Arran to accept a Frenchdukedom (Châteauhérault), and to resign the Regency to the loyal,brave, and single-minded Mary of Guise. In 1558 Mary Stewartmarried François, the Dauphin, amid great pomp in the Cathedral ofNotre Dame, Paris. The bride was admired for her beauty, sweetness,and amiable grace; the bridegroom, a swart lad of nineteen, borepitiful marks of degeneracy—stammering, frail, in constant pain,he was already a victim to the tuberculosis that was in a shorttime to kill him. Mary seems to have been fond of her unhappyhusband; she was kind and affectionate with him, and nurseddevotedly his increasing illness.

On this occasion of her marriage she entered politics with anact of treachery that showed either the foolishness of a girl orthe double-dealing of a false nature. She signed Scotland away, bya secret document, to her father-in-law, while the ScottishCommissioners, who had come to France to protect their country,were fobbed off with a sham undertaking, which Mary privatelypromised not to honour. Doubtless the young bride acted under theinfluence of her relations; but in thus endeavouring to reduce herkingdom to an appanage of France, like Brittany, in thus, as thefirst act of her reign, deliberately tricking her subjects, shegave no indication of either the brilliant intellect or thegenerous heart she was supposed to possess. In 1559, Henri II waskilled in an accident, and Mary and François became jointsovereigns of Scotland and France. Her father-in-law had done herone disservice in advising her to adopt the style, arms, andliveries of Queen of England on the death of Mary Tudor in 1558.Elizabeth was, in the opinion of all Roman Catholics, illegitimate,and Mary Stewart the rightful sovereign of England; but to assertthese claims was a meaningless flourish on the part of Henri II,and roused a bitter resentment and a deep suspicion in ElizabethTudor, which she never overcame.

The return of Knox to Scotland in 1559 was the signal for aProtestant rebellion that Mary of Guise was powerless to repress;when she died in 1560 (a great personal grief to her daughter), thetriumphant Protestants established the Reformed Church, and "theLords of the Congregation" assumed the government of the country,with only a technical acknowledgment of the sovereignty of Mary andher husband. This was the end of the Roman Church and the Frenchalliance in Scotland; the Lords, chief among whom was JamesStewart, Mary's half-brother, gorged themselves with Church lands,and looked to Elizabeth for support, money, and counsel.

The death from tuberculosis of the young Francois II in 1560left Mary in a desolate position; the new King, Charles IX, was achild, the power of the House of Guise was in eclipse, andCatherine de Medicis, the Queen-Mother, disliked herdaughter-in-law. The Queen of Scots, who had won golden opinions byher beauty, meekness, discretion, and dignity, refused to ratifythe treaty of Edinburgh, made between England and the rebel Lords,thereby incurring the increased enmity of Elizabeth, and returnedto Scotland, August, 1561. She had refused an invitation from theEarl of Huntly, co*ck o' the North, brought by Leslie, Bishop ofRoss, to attempt to restore her faith by force, but acquiesced,probably on the advice of her Guise kinsmen, in the Protestantestablishment; she made the able and avaricious Lord James, herhalf-brother, her principal adviser, and submitted to a state ofaffairs that punished with death a second attendance at Mass. Shecould barely obtain a reluctant consent for the private exercise ofher own worship in Holyrood, and signed decrees banishing monks andnuns under severe penalties.

Her figure is here shadowy; she seems to have been passive inthe hands of the Lord James and his party, very willing to pleaseher Protestant subjects, eager to court Elizabeth, full of highspirits and pretty ways. She had brought a French retinue with her,and their luxurious elegance and her own frivolous amusem*ntsproved ample material for the eloquence of John Knox to embellishinto a picture of "Venus and all her crew." The fiery reformer wasprobably half-insane, and there is no evidence whatever that Maryhad learnt any vices in France or that her diversions in Holyroodwere not wholly innocent. So far did she go in complaisance to herhalf-brother and the Lords, that she herself rode against herrebellious subject and co-religionist, the Earl of Huntly, andappeared to rejoice at the ruin of the Gordons and the RomanCatholic North. She gave the Lord James the title of Earl of Moray(Murray) and endured patiently perpetual schemes andcounter-schemes for her second marriage. Her nerves were galled rawby the intricate disputes over her future husband; the samequestion was also exasperating Elizabeth almost beyond endurance.To these speculations was joined that of the successions to the twoKingdoms; would Elizabeth die unwed or childless, and Mary andCatholicism inherit England, or would Elizabeth and Protestantismswallow up, one way or another, Scotland? Moray, and even moredefinitely Sir William Maitland, most brilliant of Scottishpoliticians, were working towards England and the tenets of theReformation; Mary, passive though she seemed, was in everythingvowed to France and the Pope, who had sent her the Golden Rose,sadly naming her—"Rose among Thorns."

It is not known how many Roman Catholics remained in Scotland,nor how far the desolation of the country, the ruin of abbeys,convents, churches, and church property was due to the zeal of theReformers, and how much to the brutality of Somerset's armies, butit cannot be disputed that Mary found her faith cast out andinsulted, her way of life reviled, and her conduct exposed to thefanatic insolence of John Knox and his followers. She kept hertemper admirably, but she suffered in spirit, and her healthfailed; she was subject to frequent fainting fits and bouts ofmelancholy. Among the turbulent, lawless, greedy, and oftendishonest nobles who surrounded the lonely girl, there was not oneon whom she could rely in any way. Even Moray, well as he servedher, was Elizabeth's pensioner, and no one could be sure ofMaitland.

Mary showed some interest in a brilliant French borderchieftain, James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, her mother's loyalservant, but he had to flee the country for misconduct and Maryappears at this period not to have had any favourite, man orwoman.

It is impossible, here, to hint even at the complexity ofEuropean politics that formed Mary's background; her own onepolitical idea was to be recognised as heiress to the English crownand, ultimately, to bring back the two Kingdoms under Roman,Catholicism. She was even prepared to consider Elizabeth's ownfavourite, the Earl of Leicester, as a possible husband, if thatQueen would promise her the English succession; but Elizabeth's andBurleigh's intricate schemes were developed in an endlessprocrastination. Mary's conduct, never yet blamed for more thanfeminine frivolity or youthful lightness, was the subject of gossipduring the Chastelard affair, when a young Frenchman was beheaded(1562) for the audacity of twice concealing himself in her bedroom;the Queen passed the first years of her reign without provoking anycensure more serious than the unseemly diatribes of the fanaticPuritans. Her elegance and beauty, her taste and sweet manners,were much extolled; she was affable to all, and seemed to havetriumphed in a difficult position when she made the marriage thatwas, literally, fatal to all her fortunes.

Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, came to Scotland in 1565; he wasthe elder son of Mathew Stewart, Earl of Lennox, who had takenservice with the English and Margaret, daughter of Margaret Tudorand the Earl of Lennox; he was, after Mary, the heir to the Englishthrone. On his father's side he could claim royal blood, for Lennoxwas descended from James II through his daughter Mary. Darnley hadbeen educated as an Englishman, trained and pampered by anambitious mother, and came to Scotland an arrogant, wilful,passionate boy of nineteen. He was instantly disliked by theScottish nobles and instantly infatuated Mary. All the accountsthat we have of him are so unfavourable that it is difficult tounderstand how a brilliant, witty, ardent woman could have becomeso enamoured of him. It is to be supposed that he possessedexceptional good-looks; Randolph, the dry English ambassador,thought that no woman could resist "that fair face."

Mary's sudden passion was headlong; despite the Tudor claim,Darnley was not—especially by Moray and his party—thought to be aworthy match, but Mary married him secretly in March and publiclyin July of 1565.

The Queen's behaviour during the next few years of her life hasbeen the subject of such acrid dispute, and is in itself soobscure, that only the mere outline of her story can be describedin a limited space, and this with the greatest reserve.

The marriage gave the Queen a sudden spirit of independence—shecast herself into the Romish party, neglected Elizabeth and Moray,showed energy, restless self-assertion, and a disposition forforeign intrigue. She raised to authority and admitted to herintimacy one David Rizzio, a confidant of her husband, and made himher foreign secretary, an honour that the Italian bore withinsolence and that outraged both nobles and the King. Moray wasstung into rebellion and rose in arms at Ayr; Mary, gathering fivethousand men, chased him from pillar to post, and finally out ofthe kingdom. Meanwhile, her marriage had fallen to pieces; Darnley,weak, bewildered, young, and undisciplined, clamoured for the crownmatrimonial, and spent his time in field sports, and invectivesagainst all who opposed him.

Mary's passion for the fair youth soon flared out, and such washer indiscretion that, when her pregnancy was first known, theEnglish envoy expressed his conviction that the child had beenfathered by Rizzio. Darnley also took the extreme step ofjeopardising the succession of the child by asserting that theItalian was his wife's lover, while the nobles took advantage ofDarnley's fury to plan the murder of Rizzio. This scheme was knownat the English Court, but Mary seems to have been in utterignorance of the storm that her folly had provoked, until it brokein her presence, March, 1566. By Darnley's express wish Rizzio wasdragged from Mary's supper-table in Holyrood and murdered in herante-chamber. The Queen was made a prisoner, but had, under thesefearful circ*mstances, the address to detach her husband from hisfellow conspirators, and to induce him to escape with her fromHolyrood. Moray returned to Scotland, and though Mary probably knewof his share in the Rizzio outrage, she received him in friendlyfashion. Moreover, until the birth of her son (June, 1566), sheaffected good terms with Darnley, who had publicly repudiated anyshare in the murder of the Italian.

But Mary had received from the other conspirators proof of hiscomplicity. Soon after the birth of her son (Darnley tacitlyaccepted the paternity) Mary made the Earl of Bothwell conspicuousby her favours, and did not disguise her frantic desire to be ridof her wretched husband. Darnley had been doomed from the moment hehad so foolishly betrayed his fellow murderers, and the Lords (theguiding spirits being probably Moray and Maitland) decided to useBothwell as a cat's-paw in removing him, as they had used Darnleyas a cat's-paw in removing Rizzio. Bothwell was "a lewd man,blinded by ambition," violent, brave, and vicious; he had earnedMary's gratitude by helping in her escape from Holyrood and, usedto success with women, was confident of winning her, and throughher, the crown. The Lords seem to have promised him Mary as a bribefor murdering (or organising the murder of) Darnley; but this isall matter for endless controversy. Certain it is that Mary andDarnley quarrelled bitterly, that he threatened to leave thekingdom, that she showed open favour to Bothwell, newly married toJane Gordon, sister of the Earl of Huntly. It was believed by manythat Bothwell was her lover soon after the birth of the child, asthey believed that Rizzio had been her lover soon after herlove-match with Darnley. It is certain that she knew of a deepconspiracy against her husband when she went to fetch him, a sickman, from Glasgow, where he was safe with his father, to Kirk o'Field, a lonely house outside Edinburgh. This was blown up, andDarnley's dead body found in a nearby field, February, 1567.

Seldom has a crime caused greater scandal. The explosion in Kirko' Field echoed throughout Europe, and the death of this young man,despised and hated, important only by the accident of birth, was apolitical rallying cry and an excuse for political and personalrevenge for years. It is not known how many people, instigators orhired bravoes, were implicated in this clumsy murder, but most, ifnot all, of those known to be concerned in it perished by murder oron the scaffold. Mary was at once suspected and had her defenceready—the plot had been intended to destroy her also and she hadescaped by accident. This was not tenable, and was held to be asfutile as Bothwell's explanation "that thunder [sic] fromheaven had consumed the King's dwelling."

No one seemed to doubt that Bothwell was the leading spirit inthe taking off of Henry Darnley, and Mary was warned by friends andfoes (notably by Elizabeth) that she could save her reputation onlyby bringing the murderers to justice. It is doubtful if she couldhave done this, as there were probably few among the Lords who hadnot had some hand in the crime. But she made no show of wanting to;Bothwell, under pressure from England and Lennox, was brought to afarcical trial, where some of his fellow-murderers were among thejudges, and acquitted. Mary, disregarding all warnings and threats,continued to show him open favour. On her return from a visit toher son in Stirling Castle, April, 1567 (this was the last time shesaw him), she was abducted by Bothwell at a bridge over the Almondand taken to Dunbar Castle. It was at once believed by many thatthis outrage was committed with her connivance. Bothwell, withscandalous haste, hurried a divorce from his innocent wife throughthe courts, and brought the Queen to Edinburgh on May 3rd, the daythat the decree of divorce was pronounced. Mary made no protest,offered no explanation, and made no effort to escape. Bothwellforced the fiery and reluctant John Craig, Knox's deputy, toannounce his approaching marriage to the Queen, which the ministerdid on May 9th in St. Giles's Church, calling "Heaven and earth towitness that the proposed union was odious and scandalous to theworld." On May 12th Mary went to the Chief Court of Justice anddeclared that she acted of her own free will and bore no offenceagainst Bothwell; the same day she created him Duke of Orkney, andon May 15th she married him, in accordance with the rites of theReformed Church, in Holyrood Palace.

Reasons for this ruinous marriage have been variously given;some argue that she had a romantic infatuation for Bothwell and didnot believe he was concerned in the Darnley murder, and so actedwith all the good faith a woman in love is capable of; otherssuppose that she had been the Earl's mistress for some time, andhad urged on the murder and the divorce and arranged the abductionto save her honour; and a third opinion is that she was a whollyinnocent woman, overpowered by Bothwell, and forced to marry himafter he had violently outraged her in Dunbar Castle. The commonfeeling at the time, and apparently shared by Elizabeth, theFrench, and English ambassadors, was that the wretched marriage wasowing to Mary's desperate attempt to save her reputation. It shouldbe noted that a woman of Mary's wit, spirit, and courage was hardlylikely to be tricked by a ruffian without some attempt to saveherself or some appeal for help. On the other hand, she had longbeen in miserable health, was tormented by pain, fainting fits, andhysterical attacks, while her appearance and manner showed theutmost anguish of mind. Bothwell was detestable to all, a personalenemy of England, of bad reputation, offensive to Mary's Frenchrelations as a Protestant and a commoner, hopelessly compromised inthe murder of a man whose widow he had married three months afterthe crime. Mary lost the good opinion of all; the Pope, Spain, andFrance tacitly repudiated her, her subjects were shocked and angry;the Lords—who had edged Bothwell on to destroy Darnley—now had agood excuse for raising their standard against a murderess and amurderer.

The Queen and Bothwell gathered what army they could together,and met the Lords at Carberry Hill, seven miles from Edinburgh,June, 1567. A day's wearisome negotiation, when Du Croc tried toact as mediator, ended in failure; the Queen's men straggled overto the Lords, Bothwell fled from the field, and Mary was broughtback a prisoner to Edinburgh, where the people greeted her withcries of "murderess!" She was ignobly treated and lodged roughly inthe Provost's house, where she might be seen at the window in astate of violent emotion, dishevelled and half-naked, shrieking forhelp. Mary feared the death of an adulteress and murderess at thestake, and with reason. The Blue Blanket, the famous banner of theTrades Guild, had to be brought out to protect her from the mobwhen the Lords moved her to Lochleven, the island home of Moray'smother, Margaret Douglas. Moray's return to Scotland and theskilful intervention of Elizabeth's envoy, Throgmorton, savedMary's life or shelved her trial for murder, but she was forced toabdicate in favour of her son, who was crowned James VI.

The following year she contrived to escape from Lochleven and toraise a force against her half-brother, Moray, then Regent for thelittle King. At Langside her rabble of supporters was defeated, andMary fled for her life as fast as a horse could carry her, toEngland, crossing the Solway with a few followers in May, 1568. Shehas been blamed for this flight into England as for a greatblunder, but it is difficult to see what else she could have done.She certainly hoped that Elizabeth was her friend, because thatQueen had helped her against the rebel Lords, and even hoped shemight find an English army to lead against Moray, but even thoughshe was in this grievously deceived, she had no reasonablealternative to a flight into England. Elizabeth played her usualgame of shuttleco*ck; she detained Mary in honourable captivity, setup a Commission to enquire into her position and guilt, andmeanwhile refused to see her or to allow her to come to London orto plead her cause in person. Moray, to justify his rebellion, putin the famous "casket" letters, which he declared had been foundunder Bothwell's bed. These were love letters supposedly written byMary to Bothwell before their marriage, and one, the Glasgowletter, afforded damning proof of her active agency in Darnley'sdeath. Mary declared the letters to be forgeries and Elizabethdissolved the Commission with a verdict of "not proven," butcontinued to support Moray and to keep Mary in prison.

The question of the "casket" letters is one of the mysteries ofhistory; if they were forged (and this was an age of forgery, andthe Lords were completely unscrupulous), some very cunning handmust have done the work, so exactly do they fit into Mary's story.Mary, fretting desperately against a captivity that she regarded asan act of base treachery and injustice, intrigued with the RomanCatholics for her release (1569), agitated for her divorce fromBothwell who had fled to Denmark, where he was a prisoner, andschemed to marry the Protestant Duke of Norfolk. The rebellion waspromptly crushed by Elizabeth, and Norfolk finally put his head onthat "wooden pillow" against which the English Queen had warnedhim. A small party in Scotland—"Queen's men"—struggled for Mary,but with their ultimate defeat her last hopes of returning to herthrone vanished.

The rest of Mary's life is a dismal and monotonous chronicle ofthe rapidly ageing, restless, ambitious, and sick woman's attemptto regain freedom and power. It is easy to understand both herattitude and that of Elizabeth. It was quite natural for Mary touse every weapon of intrigue, deceit, and guile in order not onlyto escape from an English prison, but to gain her lifelongambition, the English throne, and it was quite natural forElizabeth to watch and thwart these schemes and to regard Mary as asource of grave potential danger, not only to herself, but to herfaith and the liberty of her people. The English Protestantsprofoundly mistrusted and feared Mary, and Elizabeth wascontinually urged by Parliament and people to do what her instinctforbade her to do, get rid of a fellow-man and afellow-sovereign.

As Elizabeth aged, the question of the English succession becameof increasing interest to Europe, and as Mary's politicalimportance increased, Pope, Spain, and France alike forgot hertainted reputation, which years of imprisonment might be supposedto gloss over. France, however, abandoned Mary by the Treaty ofBlois, and the desperate captive willed her rights in England toPhilip of Spain in return for his assistance in obtaining herfreedom. This letter was intercepted by the vigilant Walsingham,and it was then decided by Burleigh, if not by Elizabeth, todestroy Mary. An elaborate scheme of judicial murder was evolved;Walsingham patiently spun the web of the Babington conspiracy, andMary, ill, hopeless, and frantic, and too remote from publicaffairs to be prudent, fell into the trap. She dictated a letter toBabington, which gave consent to a rising on her behalf, andtacitly agreed to an attempt on the life of Elizabeth (1586).

Mary, so ill that she could not walk alone, was brought beforean imposing Commission of Elizabeth's peers. The forlorn andhelpless woman defended herself with spirited skill, but withoutevoking compassion, before the judges determined to destroy her.She was found guilty and sentenced to die by the axe. Elizabeth,ill from emotion, tried to put off the execution, or at least toevade responsibility for it, but Burleigh was resolute in thepursuance of his policy. There is no reason to believe thatElizabeth was animated by vindictive feelings, or that herreluctance to put Mary to death was feigned. The Queen, Burleigh,and the majority of the nation honestly regarded Mary as amurderess, a wanton, a liar, and a woman continuously plotting tomurder Elizabeth and restore the tyranny of Rome by the force offoreign arms.

With formal ceremonial Mary was beheaded in the great Hall ofFotheringay, February 7th, 1587. Her noble dignity, her touchingfarewells to her devoted servants, her lofty fortitude and unshakenfidelity to her faith, her splendid appearance—all infirmities andblasted beauty being disguised by rich attire and artful femininedevices—moved the spectators of this awful scene to respect, ifnot to sympathy. But the news of the death of the Scottish Queenwas received with bell-ringing and bonfires in London and withgreat rejoicings all over the country. It was generally believedthat the newly won and not wholly consolidated liberty of Englandhad been rescued from a great peril.

The Protestant James VI assented to his mother's death in hiseagerness to become King of England. When that ambition wasachieved (1603) he had his mother's body (1612) brought fromPeterborough Cathedral, where her coffin had lain near to that ofCatherine of Aragon, and placed under a handsome monument near tothat of Queen Elizabeth in Westminster Abbey.

Mary, Queen of Scots, died without having, by a single word,thrown any light on any of the mysteries of her life that have beensubjects of such keen controversy for so long. There will always bepainful and probably fruitless debate over Mary's conduct as awoman and a Queen. Immediately after her death she became a martyrin the eyes of many of her own Faith, and as such was elevatedalmost to the position of a saint. Even to those who do not investher with mythical qualities, her charm, her suffering, her famousname, and most of all, the tragedy of her death, will always giveher a romantic importance that is enhanced by the apparentlyinsoluble puzzles presented by her conduct during her brief reign.This is, from the historian's point of view, a mere episode in thestory of Scotland that did not affect the development of thatnation one way or another; neither the Queen herself, nor Rizzio,nor Darnley, nor Bothwell, was more than a passionate child ofchance and circ*mstance. None of them believed in, or strove for,large issues, or for any but selfish aims, but because this womanwas Mary Stewart and because these men were singled out by herregard, they have a certain but brittle immortality, the uselessbrilliancy and the guarded permanency of a jewel in a shrine, whichin itself is nothing but a lustrous shining, but which may besymbolic of anything that the spectator chooses to invoke.

Mary, in herself, was something less than a Queen, yet issomething more than a figure in the history books; she is alwaysdoubled by her legend, as a flower or a star may be doubled inwater or glass. Not the least fascination of her story is thewonder of it, the sense of exasperation that it raises in the mind;the tantalising possibilities, the bewildering questions provokedby the two murders and the two marriages, the lovely figure of thewoman whom so many praised and none helped, who had no weaponbeyond her tears and no buckler beyond her pride, and was fortunatein nothing save in the cruel death that dimmed all her faults.

8. THREE DUTCH PROVINCES

*

1. OVERIJSSEL
With an imaginary portrait of Robert Spencer, 2nd Earl of Sunderland, 1670*

2. DRENTHE
With an imaginary portrait of William III, Prince of Orange, 1672*

3. GUELDERS
With an imaginary picture, "The Encampment," 1640*

[* Some very short pieces of fiction are inserted in the"Three Dutch Provinces"; they were inspired by Dutch paintings andrepresent the author's reactions to Dutch history and art.
—Marjorie Bowen]

1. OVERIJSSEL

PORTRAIT OF ROBERT SPENCER,
2ND EARL OF SUNDERLAND, 1670
by
CARLO MARATTA

LORD SUNDERLAND sat in the Groote Kerk at Utrecht. His figure,in straight-cut black, was indistinguishable from all those otherfigures in straight-cut black, and his face he kept hidden in hishand, as he bowed forward in an attitude of devotion.

But his hand betrayed him; there was none other so elegant andsensitive among that austere congregation.

Long, tedious, heavy, the sermon hummed on without rise or fallin the voice of the speaker. The vast whitewashed space of themutilated church was filled by the colourless light of afternoon,which streamed blankly through the huge plain-glass windows.

To right and left, before and behind my lord, were rows ofDutchmen in dark clothes, with severe faces, and Dutchwomen in darkclothes with severe faces. These all gazed unflinchingly at thepreacher and never at the Earl, though there could hardly have beena greater curiosity than this English nobleman who had been sogreat, so loathed—a Romanist, a persecutor of the Protestants, anaccomplice in all the hot designs of his master, King James ofEngland, against the Reformed Church, most exquisite, skilful, andunscrupulous of courtiers and statesmen, now fallen, exiled andagain an apostate, for my lord had not shrunk from abjuringCatholicism and joining the rigid Church of Calvin—no one in soshort a time, or with so much ease and grace, had run from theJesuits to Geneva.

Once a leader of every fashion and accomplishment, my lord wasnow dressed like a Dutch burgher, with profound simplicity, inutter drab plainness.

When the service was over and the close-packed pews emptied, aslong, decorous streams of quiet people filed out of the whiteinterior of the church into the serene sunshine of the slumberingafternoon, then many did venture a glance of cold inquisitivenessat the exiled statesman who bore himself so meekly among them.

My lord remained till the last, sighing now and then, and oftenkeeping that beautiful hand, as if in an access of devotion, beforehis face.

The Pastor came down from the cumbrous pulpit and greeted hisillustrious convert. The caressing manners of my lord, which hadfascinated two Kings, had won the Calvinist preacher; grim andnarrow as he was, he flushed with pleasure at the sight of mylord's penitence, which had been wrought by his own eloquence.

The two left the church together.

My lord was not young, but of an exceedingly pleasing presence.His fineness could not be hidden by his harsh dress; it requiredall his tact, all his art to nullify the impression of smilingcynicism, of irony that was given by his delicate, thrice-refinedfeatures.

The Pastor, with a crude curiosity, asked my lord if he did notregret his gorgeous Palace at Althorp, the crowded splendours ofSt. James's and the great appointments he had had.

Then my lord, who was yet called by the London people "Popishdog" and "Judas," said no, that his heart was now so touched bydivine grace that the loss of all his worldly honours was asnothing to him, that his exile was sweetened and his afflictionswere solaced by the discovery of the truth of the dogmas of theCalvinistic religion.

"Yet," said the Pastor, with a shudder, "I have heard it saidthat you, sir, did once, in public, deny the existence of a God atall?"

"If you knew me a little better," smiled the Earl sweetly, "youwould know that I am incapable of such—indiscretion"—he murmuredthis last word into his handkerchief and said aloudinstead—"blasphemy."

"It did," replied the Pastor heavily, "seem to meincredible."

They parted near the renowned "Paille Maille," where my lord hadhis modest lodgings, and the Earl, gracefully detaining theDutchman on the threshold of the little gabled house, thanked himmost winningly for the edification afforded by his sermon.

My lady was within, seated alone in the dark and formalroom.

Like my lord, she had disguised the remains of lustrous beautyby a puritanical dress. She was making tea and sighing over apacket of letters—the last letters from home.

The Earl put down his high-crowned hat; the two ruined exilesregarded each other.

On the mantel-shelf was a sketch of my lord in his youth; mylady always carried it about with her. It was a drawing in pencilby the Abbate Maratti for the picture at Althorp painted when mylord was in Italy. He had been taken in a classic dress and thefull flower of his beauty. Nothing could have been a greatercontrast than this sketch and my lord's present appearance in hisDutch garments.

"I do not know," said the Countess, "how I shall well bearit."

"Fie," replied my lord with his soft smile, "it is very amusing.If you can learn to sleep with your eyes open and sitting upright,you may have a fair enjoyment in a Dutch church. Utrecht is themost amiable of cities. Besides, we shall not be here long."

"It is impossible that we can return to England."

My lord lifted his delicate brows. He thought that if he hadmanaged two English Kings he might contrive to manage a third, buthe did not remark on this, even to his wife; instead he drank histea (a luxury of which the exiles had to be careful) in silence,and gazed with irony at that sketch of his blooming youth that wasso incongruous in this setting.

OVERIJSSEL

"In omnibus requiem quaesivi et nusquam inveni nisi in Angelo cum libello."

—Motto under the Picture of Thomas à Kempis, formerly at Zwolle.

OVERIJSSEL, unlike Drenthe, which was not considered ofsufficient importance to be represented on the States-General, wasone of the original seven Provinces of the North, the remnant thatWilliam the Silent wrested from Spain, that portion of theNetherlands where, as he said, he "would go and find a grave."

There are three of the most attractive towns in the Netherlandsin Overijssel, Kampen, Deventer, and Zwolle, a charming castle,Rechteren, and a very pleasant and lush stretch of country withwater villages such as Giethoorn, which, though inaccessible, arein danger of becoming an attraction for tourists.

Like Friesland, Groningen, and Zeeland, Overijssel is bestvisited by boat, one's own boat, but if this is not possible, thecountry, which still has a very out-of-the-way air, may be visitedby road, rail, motor or cycle. It is not, however, difficult tohire boats and boatmen, and the peculiar flavour of such a journeyamong these waterways is one not lightly to be forgone.

The peat fields of the Drenthe merge into the reedy marshes, theluscious meadows, the noble sheets of water of Overijssel, which onthe other side runs into the spacious moors of Guelders.

Meppel, a quiet town, really in the Drenthe, is a starting placefor many expeditions into Overijssel and Hasselt. Zwartsluis andGenemuiden set off the broad waters of the Meppeler Diep, whichdivides at Zwartsluis to run down to Zwolle and across into theZwolsche Diep, which empties into the Zuyder Zee opposite theminute islands of Urk and Schokland.

The roads run on the high, artificial banks that edge the water(the land is here at the utmost but a few inches above the level ofthe sea) and the groups that pass to and fro are outlineddistinctly in the crystal clarity of the air, against the changingpanorama of the vast sky. The country is often entirely under waterhere, all farms, churches and buildings being raised on mounds.Rows of windmills work incessantly draining the land, and theireager energy is in sharp contrast to the extreme placidity of thelandscape.

These windmills are disappearing in favour of those run byelectricity, but a happy movement is at present on foot to preservethese faithful ancient servants of the Netherlands, not only forsentimental affections, on account of tradition and the rare beautyof their shape and colour, but for another and touching reason.

Electricity means coal, and coal has to come from abroad; if,through any European disturbance this vital supply was stopped, thecountry would be under water in a few days—unless these loyalallies, the windmills, were there ready to resume their duties.

One heartily hopes that patriotism will save from destruction afeature of the flat landscape that is so lovely, so apt, so deeplyassociated with the very life of the country, so honoured by manygreat painters.

Without the windmills it would be more difficult to defend theNetherland scenery against the charge of dullness which theindifferent traveller so often brings.

These solitary, still waters have another beauty besides thewindmills—the quantities of wild swans which dwell among the bedsof stiff reeds.

The birds are protected by the authorities and nest and breed insecurity in these lonely sheets of water and patches of watergrass. The rich white of the immaculate plumage, the superbmovement of the sailing bird, the vivid black of beak and eye arethrown up against this flat background of blue-green melting intomauve purples with an effect of poignant loveliness.

Among all the delectable pictures offered in this country offine lines, flat horizons, immense skies, and vivid details, noneis more beautiful than this of the Overijssel swans among thesolitary clumps of reeds, on the lonely stretches of water beneaththe lofty expanse of the sky and the ever-changing shapes of theclouds.

* * *

In the upper part of Overijssel, towards Friesland, the mostnotable town is Steenwyck, which has a robust little history of itsown. It is more interesting than Meppel, and is, like that town andKoevorden, situated on the borders between Drenthe and Overijssel.While Koevorden is in the former Province, however, Steenwyck andMeppel are in Overijssel, at least technically.

It is situated on the river Aa, the name of so many streamshereabouts, and built, as an old chronicler says pleasantly, in theform of a bow. Always one of the least important towns ofOverijssel, yet the church is one of the most important in the Northof the Low Countries, a grandiose building originally dedicated toSaint Clement and dating from the twelfth century. Of course it hasbeen destroyed, rebuilt, patched, and mutilated, and remains only afragment, bare and whitewashed within, and shattered andincomplete-looking without.

Another relic is the church once known as that of Our Lady,rebuilt in 1477, and in recent times carefully restored. Steenwyckis a town of many sieges. In 1552 it was besieged in vain by Countde Meurs, in 1553 carried by assault by the troops of Charles V,and the ancient castle razed to the ground, but the siege that madeSteenwyck famous in the annals of valiant deeds was that during theWar of Independence in 1580, when the Count de Renneberg investedthe town with six thousand foot and twelve companies of horsesoldiers.

The Dutch garrison consisted of but six hundred soldiers andthree hundred male citizens, of whom no more than half could berelied on as regards loyalty to their commanders. Four years afterthe siege an account of it was written by one Remigo Fresinga andpublished at Deventer by Fridsert of Kampen. This is epic in styleand minute in detail, and abounds in those episodes of a kind offerocious headlong heroism in which these Northern stalwartsdelighted.

There is the story of "Arent of Groningen, son of a brewer," wholeaped from the ramparts into the moat, one October night, toextinguish a barrel of tar and sulphur which the enemy hadsucceeded in floating to the town gates, and contrived, under aheavy fusillade, to do so and return in safety, shouting defianceat the enemy. There is the account of two captains, one of eacharmy, who challenged each other and fought on the ramparts in theold style of single combat, in full view of garrison and besiegers,and many another such vehement deed, which reveals, through thedust of history, the high, hard passions of those bitter times.

The commanders of the Dutch were Cornput and Olthof, and it issaid of the former that when in the Market Square (still much thesame, and peaceful enough now) an angry starving crowd wasdemanding the surrender of the town, three partridges fell intotheir midst, and Cornput was quick to improve the occasion byremarking that this was a message from God, implying that helpwould come in three weeks.

As, of course, it did, or the story would not have been told.After a four months' siege Colonel Norrits, at the head of the armyof the young Republic, contrived to send into the desperate littletown cheeses, bread and powder; a few days later Renneberg raisedthe siege.

The resources of Steenwyck were, however, exhausted, plagueinvaded the thinned ranks of the inhabitants, and the followingyear the town fell easily to the Spanish commander, Verdugo.

After ten years of Spanish rule Steenwyck was retaken by theresplendent Maurice of Orange, and it is pleasant to know thatCaptain Olthof and other veterans of the 1580 siege now servedunder the young Prince who came to deliver Steenwyck.

As a result of this struggle Steenwyck was almost razed to theground, so that it is difficult to find there any old houses. In1672 Steenwyck shared the humiliation of so many Netherlandishtowns, and was occupied by foreign troops, those, in this case, ofthe Bishop of Münster, who, after exacting ransom, abandoned thetown the following year.

To-day Steenwyck has a most placid, even bucolic appearance. Hertrade is in grain and butter, and where the fierce Calvinists andthe grim Spanish tramped to and fro in their beleaguerings andfights, there is a peaceful procession of peasants and carts, gay,cheerful, and innocent with the most idyllic of products, goldenbutter, golden corn from the lush meadows and generous wheatfieldsthat surround Steenwyck.

There is a little Weigh House of 1642, a very pleasant andappropriate structure, charmingly grave and practical.

* * *

Deventer, on the Yssel, is the other side of the Province,towards Guelders, and one of the most attractive of towns.

The situation, on the broad and busy river edged with wharvesand crowded with shipping, is in itself noble and handsome, andallows for one of those views from the opposite bank which is sucha pleasing way of seeing a town.

It is indeed one of the most satisfactory features of theseDutch cities that they do permit of these complete "views" like anold map, print, or painting. The town shows self-contained,beginning and ending within definite limits, usually encircled byold ramparts, gardens, bouquets of trees, a moat, a river or acanal, not straggling away into slums, suburbs or "villa"residences, as do so many famous towns in other parts of Europe,until all charm, identity and individuality are obliterated.

There are very few of these Dutch towns that do not still retaina distinct, precise personality, a compact personality, like thetowns drawn by Dürer, by Van Goyen, by Van Eyck, by Ver Meer.

In the case of Deventer, this elegant distinction is verynoticeable. The quays, the old walls, the grand flow of the river,the lofty trees, all surround the roofs, towers and belfries of theancient town, in the most imposing and graceful way possible, whilethe tall steeples of the episcopal city can be seen for milesdominating the landscape, and the twisting length of the renownedriver, bordered by delicious villages like Hattum, Veessen, Olst,Diepenveen, Nijbroek, and Terwolde, lying so attractively amongpretty groves and reflected so prettily in the still waters of theYssel.

The remains of the first fortifications of Deventer are those ofthe magnificent brick wall which repulsed the onslaught of theBurgundians in 1457, when Philip the Good attacked the town uponthe refusal of Deventer to acknowledge his son, the Bishop ofUtrecht, as overlord. The intervention of the neighbouring Duke ofGuelders saved the town from the consequences of this temerity.

During the struggle with Spain, Deventer was Dutch andProtestant in word and deed. In 1586 the Earl of Leicester forcedthe town to receive a garrison of twelve hundred men, much againstthe will of the citizens, who preferred to trust to their ownmilitia.

The said garrison consisted of those people dreaded in thosedays under the name of "wild Irish," and their commander was animpudent adventurer who had contrived to flatter Leicester intothis preferment. He was Edward Stanley, recently knighted for lustybravery on the ramparts of Bergen.

He promptly sold Deventer to Colonel Taxis, the Spanishcommander, and the town remained under Spanish rule till retaken byMaurice in 1591. Through the treachery of Governor Steeke it fellto the Bishop of Münster in 1672, but cut a valiant figure whenattacked by the French in 1813.

Despite this warlike history, Deventer remains singularly richin ancient buildings, and is more interesting and delightful to theantiquarian than, perhaps, any town in the country.

Deventer is very ancient, dating back, some say, to A.D. 130 butcertainly a well-established town by the eleventh century.

A certain Saint Lievin (Lebuines), who died in Deventer in A.D.770, gives his name to two of the churches here, one the Cathedral,the other once more Roman Catholic.

This was built by Ernulphe, Bishop of Utrecht, in 1046, andrebuilt in 1235 and 1334. This last building, though altered andenlarged, is still in existence. The belfry, with the mottoesraised aloft like a sermon to the birds, is of 1613 and incongruousenough, yet not without individuality and effect.

The crypt remains as it was built by the Bishop of Utrecht in1046, and contains some superb columns of twisted and chevronpattern, but these crypts are dark and sad enough, and howeverintense the interest of these subterranean relics, it is notwithout some shudder of relief that one gains the upper air.

Saint Lievin's has been, of course, whitewashed. Where this haspeeled away pictures of devils and the torments of hell have beenrevealed. One thinks the whitewash preferable; it has a character,an association of its own, not lightly to be dismissed. The lightand shade on the white spaces are lovely and have inspired manylovely pictures. The present ardour to uncover these crude daubswhich possess nothing but an historic value is laudable enough, butsince nothing can give these great Gothic churches their pristinesplendour, surely it is wiser to leave them as monuments toCalvinism and the War of Independence.

A utilitarian clock with dials, stuck in the top of the fourwindows of the mutilated (or unfinished) tower, is a touch thatmight be removed.

The iconoclast has spared, by accident probably, a mural tomb toa certain Johann van Leyden (not the unhappy tailor prophet) andhis wife, a few long, slab tombs and a portion of a Renaissancescreen. For the rest, you must be content with the nobleproportions and graceful lines of the aisles and columns.

The other Saint Lievin's, a small brick church, dates from 1338,and was Calvinist from 1579 to 1803. It used to be known as theBroeder Kerk, and formed part of a monastery, probably that of anOrder founded by Eleanor of England in 1335, and named theRecollects.

St. Nicholas's, the Berg Kerk, once belonged to thePraemonstraten monks, the powerful Order which founded the Abbey atMiddelburg. This church, "St. Nicholas of the Mountain," stands ona gentle rise, remarkable enough to have been termed "mountain" inthis flat country. The twin towers, flat and many-windowed, onedisfigured by a cap, are surmounted by pointed, cap-like spireswhich are curious and distinctive.

St. Nicholas is old enough, built 1128 by a Bishop of Utrecht,though date and Bishop vary according to the chronicler. It wouldbe the work of years to verify all these distant dates andpersonages, which fluctuate considerably in histories andguide-books.

Nor do they much matter; it is sufficient, for instance, thatthe Berg Kerk is Romanesque without, whitewash within.

Eleanor of England, wife of a Duke of Guelders, is supposed tolie buried, or once to have been buried, here, but there is notrace and no memory of her resting-place, which has probably longbeen, not the Berg Kerk, but the four corners of the earth.

* * *

There are some gorgeous little buildings in Deventer, and thechief of these is the Weigh House on the Market Square orBrink, built in 1528 from the materials and on the design oftwo old houses that stood on this site. The irregularity given bythe tower one side and the tourelle the other, the fine brick andbands of plaster, the open ornamentation of the balustrades, thepointed roof, coquettish turret and delicate spires, together withthe fine double staircase added in 1643, made the little WeighHouse (now a gymnasium) most entrancingly rich and fantastic, a toyconceived by a poet.

Yet the people who erected this jewel of a building could boilcoiners of false money, as is shown by the copper pot once used forthis purpose and still hung on the walls.

A coiner was boiled to death at Lille in 1560, and in thearchives describing the events there is a drawing of the ghastlypunishment.

The ornaments of the Weigh House, on a close inspection, revealthat grotesqueness without which any Gothic building, however late,seems incomplete. There is the sun, with attendant moon and stars,and two fantastic figures, Kijk pot and Kijk uit depot, one looking in and the other looking out of the pot—anugly fellow glancing into a cauldron, and then glancing away. Themeaning of this seems to have been forgotten, even in Deventer. Onemight guess that it referred to trade, commerce, prosperity,plenty—"the pot is empty, the pot is filled."

The Weigh House was at one time a kind of Exchange ormeeting-place of the merchants, in the old, robust, money-makingdays when Deventer was a member of the Hansa League, and thehandsome little building must have been thronged with the notablesof the town.

On the Square in front, which is now so charming and delightful,many heretics were burnt under the sombre rule of the Spanish.

Among the delicious houses, Renaissance, Gothic, "Louis XIV" asinterpreted in the Low Countries that surround the Brink,there is one most uncommonly curious, only one storey high, whichseems to consist only of an immense roof, an immense door, rococoscrolls, and above all a pinnacle crowned by a huge human head.

A "free Weigh House" was a gift from Floris V to the city, whichlater received special privileges from the Emperor Henry V.

There are some charming step-gabled houses round theBrink, and an old inn, where the Provincial Deputies used tomeet, and which is therefore called the Land huffs, has somesplendid Renaissance doors, heavy, comfortable, and florid, and astatue of a warrior, supposed to be Charles V. Some of the otherportions of the building, which is now a police station, date fromthe thirteenth century.

The Stadhuis is of 1693, pre-eminently Dutch, Calvinist, andprosperous. The bright, crude tints of the painted wooden shieldsof the arms of the ancient guilds have a peculiarly attractiveappearance against the whitewashed walls.

The main treasures here are the Terborch painting and thelibrary and archives. The library is largely from the suppressedAcademy of Harderwijk, half of which went to Arnhem, and half toDeventer. This collection contains many rare and precious MSS.;there are also some very early printed books, dating from the timethat Rykert Paffroed and Jacob van Breda worked at their twoprecious presses (about 1470) in Deventer.

The archives are particularly well kept and particularlyinteresting, Deventer having been the capital of the Province andan episcopal city.

There is also a fragment left of the Mint tower, where formerlyall the coinage for Overijssel was struck, and a wonderful baroquehouse of 1735 adorned with statues, vases, scrolls, and ornamentsin a very welter of prodigality, yet, nevertheless, successful, asthis Netherlandish "Louis XIV" so often is. This bastard style offlorid, riotous, and yet formal ornament, suits the severe and yetrich character of these old Dutch towns, and seems to express theprosperity of a well-fed merchant more adequately than the glory ofspendthrift noble.

Deventer is no place for a hurried visit; it contains a wealthof beauty, of charm, of association not easily exhausted, and thesurroundings (dealing here only with those which lie on theOverijssel side of the river, which is the boundary between thatProvince and Guelders) are most romantic and poetic.

The noble avenues of oak and elm, the luscious meadows, castleslike Hoenlo and De Haere, the cream-coloured church of Olst, thelovely tower of Wyhe, Raalte, among the bracken and heather—allthese have an endearing delight about them, something that seems tohave a part in memory, in yearning, even in nostalgia. The beautyof sky and river and distant, melancholy horizon, the beauty ofluxuriant avenues, long brick roads and terraces and mansions andcottages and farms, all lovingly raised from the drained flat, thebeauty of a poignant tradition of a past that seems somehow to havebeen undisturbed—all these affect the traveller through the summeror autumn landscape of Overijssel with a sleepy, sad pleasure.

* * *

It must not be forgotten that Deventer has not escaped modernprosperity and the resultant ugliness; very famous carpets are madehere, and that honey cake which is a national delicacy, alsowine—the native wine being a great pride of the local inns.

* * *

Three of the extraordinary company of great men who came fromthe Netherlands are claimed by Deventer: Gerrit Groot, Jacob Gronovor Gronovius, and Gerard Terborch, often called Terberg.

The family of Gronovius, or Gronov, came originally fromHamburg, where Johann Friedrich was born in 1611 or 1613. He wascelebrated as an antiquarian and classical scholar, and after manytravels became professor at Deventer. His son, Jacob, was born atDeventer in 1645. His travels, his learning, his editions of theclassics were as extensive, profound and varied as those of hisfather. He died at Leyden in 1716. The brother of this worthy,Theodor, was also dowered with almost incredible erudition. Anaccount of his works reads almost like a satire on learning,including, as it does, a work on the Pandects, notes on VibiusSequester, a dissertation on the marble base of the Colossus ofTiberius, and a correspondence with Antonio Magliabecci, librarianto Cosmo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and a prodigy of memory andlearning, who after one reading of a book could write it downverbatim, spent day and night in his study without taking off hisclothes and lived on hard-boiled eggs and water.

There is a fantastic picturesqueness about this squalidpersonage, who appears like some gnome born of the union of leatherand parchment and suckled on printers' ink, but the Gronoviuseswere prosaic and amiable pedants whose enormous learning,unenlivened by wit, humour or imagination, seems now as vain as itwas prodigious. Three sons of Jacob Gronovius adorned theeighteenth century and the town of Leyden with their scholarlygifts and patient research.

* * *

A more interesting son of Deventer is Gerrit Groot (Gerard theGreat), who "flourished," as the old biographies say, in thefourteenth century, being born at Deventer in 1340.

He began with portentous learning, taking his M.A. at theSorbonne and lecturing on philosophy and theology at Cologne.

Retiring for a while into a Carthusian monastery, he returned tothe world for the purpose of inducing others to leave it, and, cladin miserable raiment, began preaching in the streets.

In this crude, fiery, and sincere age these methods never failedof considerable effect, and Gerrit found himself with a numerousfollowing.

Returning to Deventer, he opened a kind of office, where severalpeople were employed in transcribing copies of the Scriptures andthe Early Fathers for diffusion among the vulgar; an enterprisewhich in those pre-printing days involved no little toil.

Gerrit formed this nucleus of faithful copyists into a society,which he called Brethren of the Common Life (Fratres VitaeCommunis), and which was approved formally by Gregory XI in1376.

These brothers spread all over the Low Countries and Germany.They were divided into two classes, the literate, copyists, orteachers, and the illiterate, who performed the manual labours ofthe community; the society sounds agreeable enough and must havebeen useful, too, before the spread of the printing press renderedneedless such ingenuous labours.

Gerrit Groot died in Deventer in 1384, leaving one gentle andsimple memory the more to the pretty little town.

* * *

Our last notability is more flamboyant than either JacobGronovius or Gerrit Groot, being no less than Gerard Terborch, who,though born at Zwolle, was a townsman of Deventer and died here in1681.

He was one of the most flattered and celebrated painters of histime, and if posterity has not quite confirmed the verdict of hiscontemporaries, his work is at the least rich, distinguished, andpleasing. He had travelled in Italy and visited Madrid and paintedthe plenipotentiaries at the Peace of Münster (1648) before he cameto Deventer to paint the Town Council and die, full of years andhonours, in his native Province. He had been already knighted byPhilip IV. His style, of conversations, suppers, and musicalparties, was followed by Metzu and Caspar Netscher, who improved onhim in elegance if not in vigour.

His pictures are always well-bred in tone, opulent in colour andflowing in design. He excels in depicting textiles and inparticular white satin, which sumptuous material he contrives tointroduce into most of his pieces.

Pieter van Anraadt, Caspar Netscher, and Koet were among hispupils at Deventer.

He had himself visited Haarlem for three years in his youth, andthe influence of Frans Hals is always noticeable in his pictures.There is a charming genre picture in the Mauritshuis, "TheDispatch" (No. 176), and a "Portrait of the Artist" (No. 177), adelightful little full length in black with grey stockings and ablond peruke. The Boymans Museum, Rotterdam, possesses a portraitof a certain Johann Versnyden (No. 441), and Terborch'smasterpiece, "The Peace of Münster," which contains sixtyportraits, is in the National Gallery, London. This is hardly apictorial success. Terborch has not been able to overcome adifficulty which is indeed almost insuperable, that of introducingvariety and a broken line into a large official group of portraits.The heads are nearly all on the same level and make a band of lightacross the picture; the table adds another dark mass to acomposition too heavy already, and the few details, as thecandelabra, books, etc., are swamped in the general monotony.

However, the portraits are excellently rendered, with a fine andexpressive skill, and the group, painted at the solemn moment oftaking the oath, is not without impressiveness and grandeur. As anhistoric document it is invaluable, of course, it might be termedliving history, and the figure of the man in the cloak to theright, and the elegant cavalier in rich attire to the extreme left,show what the artist could accomplish when freed from officialformula.

It was this picture, painted from life, which attracted theattention of the Spanish Envoy, Count Peneranda, and the honours ofthe Spanish visit. The "Peace of Münster" or "Treaty ofWestphalia," as it was indifferently called, was for years afavourite subject with Dutch painters, and this is the first andmost interesting of these celebrations of this famous event.

In the Stadhuis at Deventer there is, as is fitting, a "CouncilPiece" by Terborch, containing eighteen portraits of Magistratesand Secretaries, very exact and noble, and pleasing in colouringdespite the black gowns and sombre attire of these honest-facedworthies.

Dresden possesses that little masterpiece, worth all the Councilpieces in the world, the sketch for the figure in "PaternalAdvice," the lady in the satin dress and exquisite pose, with herface turned completely from the spectator. How expressive, howgracious and altogether lovely, is this averted head andturned-away figure!

Kampen, like Zwolle and Deventer, stands on the Yssel, but nearthe mouth of the river, and directly opposite Edam, which is theother side of that lost Province now covered by the Zuyder Zee.Kampen is, in reality, one of the so-called "dead cities" of theZuyder Zee, its harbour having silted and long ago destroyed thelittle town's prosperity, which reached a zenith in the fifteenthcentury, when Kampen was a member of the Hansa League.

The town is as quiet, as clean, as attractive as its neighbours,and possesses as many beauties, churches, Stadhuis, and old gates.To many this most out-of-the-way of the three Overijssel towns wouldbe the most delightful.

It makes the usual general view of grouped buildings, risingfrom behind the river with the clustered water-craft, thetjalks and peculiar barges of Overijssel, groups of the treesand that superb background of windy clouds or pallid sky that sooften inspired native painters.

The Stadhuis is one of the most prized buildings in the country.It is very old, but it was restored after the inevitable fire in1543; but the chief glory of the façade, the statues, were rescuedfrom the earlier building and so are old enough. They representCharlemagne (or some say Charles V), Alexander the Great, and theusual Fidelity and Justice, with the rare and welcome addition ofModeration and Neighbourly Love.

The outline of the Stadhuis is ornate and fantastic, with theusual white bands on brick, the tiny tourelle and large towercrowning a bulbous belfry with a spire.

This Stadhuis possesses several curiosities, two of a sinisterkind—the grille where prisoners were exposed on the street for themockery of the passer-by, not altogether in accordance with thosefigures of Moderation and Neighbourly Love, and a queer woodenroll, upon which the sentences were written.

Of a most human interest are the handsome guild goblets andbandoliers, and most gorgeous are the seats or stalls in the CourtHouse. These are the work of one Meister Vrederic (1546), whoalmost overloaded his work with rich and elaborate detail. Afurther example of opulence in excess is the chimney-piece by JacobColyn de Nole (1545), where the carvings seem to crush and stifleone another in luxuriant profusion.

The general effect of this chamber is, however, very notable andimposing, and this over-ornamentation is more to be justified in apublic room, where an impression of stately pomp is to be createdand where no one stays very long, than in a dwelling-house, or evena church, for this sumptuous decoration is neither domestic norreligious in feeling.

The principal church is St. Nicholas's, an imposing, grandioseedifice of the fourteenth century, with remains of much originalsplendour, as the rood screen with brass balusters, the font andbells, two of which date from 1482; and relics of a later age inthe brass candelabra with the town arms.

There is a very gorgeous organ (1670-1676) which claims (withmany others) to be the largest in the country.

There is also a Roman Catholic church, St. Mary's (or BuitenKerk), fourteenth century, and a peculiar tower, built betweenthe Bovenstad and Buitenstad ("above" and "without" the town) byPhilip Vinckhoorns in 1649-1664, as a landmark for ships; this iscalled (curiously for those times) Tower of the Holy Ghost, orNieuwe Toren, and contains an excellent carillon of thirty-fivebells which sounds along the winding reaches of the Yssel out tosea.

There is a tiny Romanesque church, St. Willem's (twelfthcentury), and a Broeder Kerk (fifteenth century), the formerMinorite church, and, most noteworthy of all, the gates. One isnamed the Cellebroeders Poort (1465), which bears theImperial Eagle which shows that Kampen was a free town, the KorenMarkt Poort, whitewashed so as to be visible to mariners(marvellous the uses of whitewash in this practical country!) andthe Broeders Poort.

There are the proper medieval gates of history, legend andromance, the kind that were closed at night, where the lonelybelated traveller knocked in vain, whose elegant spires were abeloved guiding point over sea and land, whose broad archwayspanned the whole flow, up and down, of a busy town'sactivities.

There is a dwelling-house over each, with latticed windows andshutters snug beneath the gable and between the turrets, and herethe gatekeeper lived, and you may be sure that he had a blondedaughter who watched the crowds below, and had a smile and maybe aflower for one of them, and a moment to spare from her tiledkitchen and her spinning-wheel to cast them down, smile andblossom, down into the streets of Kampen, perhaps in an autumndusk, when the wind was up and the stout, ruddy sails tacking forshelter and the black clouds racing across the moon.

* * *

Zwolle, now the capital of Overijssel, is on the Zwarte Water,which falls into the Zuyder Zee, and is itself a tributary of theYssel. This rings the town like a moat and is planted with densefine trees and broad waters and gardens set with luxurious houses.The town is, indeed, too prosperous and too quiet—not the quiet ofKampen and Deventer, but, the visitor suspects, the quiet of verywell-to-do, retired somebodies, who do not mind being provincialand being dull as long as they are comfortable.

In a number of Dutch towns one has a suspicion of too muchleisure, formality, and money in the bank on the part of many ofthe inhabitants, not without a gloss of snobbishness (the Dutchare, many of them, pretty good at le snobisme), and a rigiddividing of themselves into sets and cliques—the "well born," the"high born," and those born neither high nor well.

These defects, the result of too much virtue and too much timeon the part of the women, no doubt, are not without their amusingside when discerned in a people once so keenly mercantile, sofiercely Puritan, so doggedly Republican. Yet perhaps never quiteso definitely any of these things as has been popularly supposed.One guesses that a coat of arms enjoyed full value and that a longpedigree was extremely desirable even' in the most rigid days ofTheir High Mightinesses the States-General.

These precisely kept houses, so dignified, so aloof, soluxurious and so old-fashioned, seem to symbolise a life,aristocratic and worthy, no doubt, from which the free-lance whoearns his living shrinks in dismay.

Imagine your ringing at one of those polished massive doors witha hole in your glove, or without any gloves, or without a properintroduction—or fancy, in fact, your ringing at all, and seeingthe Baron or Baroness, Jonkheer or Jonkfrau, glaring out of thebrilliant plate-glass window, between the spotless curtains, overthe gilt basket of tulips, to see who dared—no, the only possibleway to visit these houses would be by the back door (if there isone), and so to creep into the kitchen, where the servants look fatand kind and the cooking is excellent.

Let us hasten away from the freezing aspect of these statelyhomes, which have too many counterparts in the country, and enterthe old town of Zwolle as an eager tourist in search of"sights."

It is not, as you will have guessed from those select purlieus,the Stad Gracht and Potgieter Singel, a manufacturing town, butdeals only in the pleasant products of the genteel country-side,corn, cattle, and butter.

The town encircled by this moat, like the Stad Gracht, is roundas Middelburg, and centres, in correct fashion, about market placeand church.

There is one gate left, and that of imposing appearance, theSassen Poort, with five towers, now used for the housing ofarchives.

The keeper of these archives works (if he does not live) in thechamber above the gate, a romantic and wizard-like existenceindeed, shut in with old books, old parchments, and old memories inthe musty, ancient chambers of the five-towered gate. It issatisfactory when one can find a veteran building put to some usethat makes it part of the life of to-day; and when that use isdignified and appropriate, what could be more pleasant!

The heart of Zwolle is an irregular, small Market Square, oneside entirely occupied by the Church of St. Michael (Groote Kerk),with in front a most uncommon addition in the shape of anentrancing little guard-house of 1614, with a very decorative giltstatue above. The church is of the fifteenth century, spacious andstately, despite the usual mutilations and the medley ofarchitecture which encloses it. The noble proportions of thechurch, which has been carefully and tastefully restored, riseharmoniously above the incongruous little guard-house, theodd-shaped market place, and the façades of the well-kept inns andshops, all with an air of repose and gentility.

The interior of the church contains a pulpit which isconspicuous even among the pulpits of the Netherlands, and an organdistinguished even among Dutch organs.

After sweeping away or painting over every trace of Romanistdecoration, in many cases even chipping off the capitals of columnsor piercing them to accommodate a stove or pipe, after taking outthe coloured glass from the windows and providing them with greencurtains or blocking them up, after choking the interior with rowsof massive pews, footstools, and cushions for the comfort andrepose of the faithful, the Puritans proceeded to let themselves goon an organ and a pulpit, on both of which they lavished the mostunlikely adornment and symbolism.

The peculiar effect of the churches thus treated is certainlyunique and extremely characteristic of a people, a country, anepoch, a temperament. One would not like to see them changed; theextraordinary atmosphere and, as it were, flavour of thesetransformed cathedrals are too piquant, at once amusing andtouching, and, like the Dutch landscape, possessed of a spare,severe, choice charm, bleak and pale, enriched by vivid details ofglowing colour and bold shape.

This organ is, no doubt, superb, and the organist has written abook all about it, and will perform on it for a fee, to your mutualsatisfaction. It does not look in the least religious, though ithas never played anything but Church music, but seems that itwould, like its one-time fellow at Cannons, prefer to "waft thesoul upon a jig to Heaven," so florid and gay it is with thecomely, self-satisfied figures and all the scrolls andtraceries.

The pulpit is more restrained and elegant in style than usual.The date is 1620, before the full bloom of riotous baroque; buthere, as in most pulpits, the over-elaboration of thesounding-board is disastrous to the impressiveness and gravity ofthe preacher, who loses all his dignity with this huge coversuspended over him, which looks as if it would descend andextinguish him, and at best dwarfs him completely.

The simple pulpit, or the niche door in the wall of the churchwith a balustrade in front, gives more force and power to thepreacher and his words; but eloquence is possibly regarded as gaudyby the Calvinists, and the pure flow of logic and the Word comes,no doubt, well enough from under these monumental covers.

In the apse is a fine oak screen with brass balustrade thatsomehow has escaped the iconoclast, and, more enticing than any ofthese treasures, is an engaging clock which the neat, gnome-likesacristan shows with modest pleasure. These Dutch sacristans andtheir wives, always so quiet and tidy, with their homely smiles andeager explanations, always seem like creatures out of a fairy-tale,but are, of course, very real indeed, and keep the spotless churchswept and dusted and the glittering candelabra polished.

This clock is set in the wall, and is topped by a figure of St.Michael with a sword, who strikes the bell for the hour.

The old man sets the little warrior at work again and again, youhear all the hours of the day struck in succession from the tinysword, and the sacristan laughs with delight, not at the ingenioustoy he knows so well, but at your amusem*nt and pleasure.

As you leave the church you see, with a sense of unlawful joy,the stripped, shuttered, balustered Hoofdwacht (GuardHouse), so impertinently flanking the long Gothic windows, sodeliciously out of place and in the right place at the sametime.

* * *

There is a Town Museum at Zwolle, in a quiet old mansion, fullof quiet old relics. You must ring the bell to enter and thecustodian makes a ceremony of admitting you, and does not like youto miss any of the exhibits, which include an odd medley, funerallamps, moulds for St. Nicholas cakes, Guild cups, an old Overijsselroom, and some admirable glass paintings that suddenly strike youwith envy and the lust of possession.

The three planes of a land- or sea-scape, foreground, middledistance, and background, are painted on three different sheets ofglass, which are afterwards fitted, one behind the other, andslightly apart, in a grooved frame. The effect is charming when thepicture is hung against the window and the light shows through theluminous brown and yellow tones, and one visitor at least went awaywith the hope of being able one day to find the skill and leisureto produce an imitation.

Glass paintings, birds, flowers, and coats of arms on littlepanels or circles to hang against windows are a pretty adornment inmany old Dutch houses, but these of treble glass are somethingout-of-the-way and queerly delightful. In the garden, at the backof this tranquil storehouse of relics, are marshalled stone pumpsand sundials with a disconsolate, pensioned air, no one troublingthem for either water or the time, handles and dial pointers beingalike broken or out of use. To some garden or square each of thesewould be an adornment; here they are but a memento mori manytimes repeated reminding us both of water and time that have flowedaway for ever.

Standing hardily off the main street of Zwolle is a morefortunate pump, lusty and substantial, with bulging, portly bodyand still in use.

* * *

Close to Zwolle is the most splendid residence in Overijssel andone of the most splendid in the country—Castle Rechteren. Asuccession of travellers has borne witness to the noble courtesy ofthe princely owners, who maintain the tradition of the courtesy inthe grand manner of the Dutch nobility.

The present castle is of the prosperous seventeenth andeighteenth centuries, but the original building was of greatantiquity. The last of the founder family, Luitgarde van Rechteren,married, in 1330, Frederic van Heckeren van der Ehze, who took thename of Rechteren, and whose descendants still possess the castleas Counts of Rechteren-Limberg.

Many a stiff fight did the stout castle maintain with Bishops ofUtrecht, with burghers of Zwolle, with the Spanish, and finallywith Prince Maurice himself, who drained the moat and dismantledthe walls.

One of the lords of Rechteren, Adolph, was a friend of the lastDuke of Guelders, and held the castle in his interest. When Charleswas captured by the citizens of Zwolle, one of the articles of hisrelease provided for the dismantling of Rechteren. This promise wasmade, but not, of course, kept.

A Van Rechteren was one of the plenipotentiaries at that Peaceof Utrecht, which finally disposed of the designs of Louis XIV onthe Netherlands, and his fine tomb may be seen in the church atAlmelo.

Rechteren, as it stands at present, is that engaging mixture ofstyles which comprises so many of these slot andkasteel of the Netherlands—the moat, the bridge, the carvedpieces and gable stones with coats of arms, the step-gabled fronts,the round tower with the cupola, the steep roof with the littlehooded windows, the terraces, steps, gardens de broderie,and formal walks and trees, all very solid, sumptuous, andindividual. In this lusty-looking tower cannon balls are embeddedand in places the walls are six feet thick. The luxurious interiorof the castle also contains warlike reminders of battles andsieges—swords, halberts, and such weapons which have been foundscattered in the grounds where now the trim flowers blow in exactparterres. The palimpsest has long since been covered up; theseancient days hidden, the elegant refinement of later centuries,comfort and prosperity succeeding to conflict and rapine. The earlyeighteenth-century stables, the 1683 terrace and steps, the 1725frontage have well-nigh obliterated the appearance of the fierceold castle where men tussled so desperately, and the atmosphere isnow more of leisurely tea-cups and satin-gowned gossip, of giltcabriolets rattling over the bridge, of slender hounds held inleash by a long-coated page, than of any turbulent struggle ofBishop or Duke, Spaniard or burgher.

* * *

One notable man, and he of world fame, is associated withZwolle, Thomas à Kempis, author of that beloved and cherished book,De Imitatione Christi.

His name was really Thomas Hamerken of Kempen, not the Kampen sonear here, but Kempen near Cologne, and he was born in 1380. Hewent early to the Grammar School at Deventer, where he came intotouch with an order or society founded by Gerrit Groot, which had aconsiderable influence upon him.

Before long the pious and mystic "Brethren of the Common Life"had enrolled Thomas among their number, and for seven years heresided in scholarly retirement in Deventer copying the Scripturesfor the benefit of the common fund.

An obscure monastery, that of Agnietenberg (St. Agnes), receivedthe spiritual, quiet, and ecstatic copyist as monk and sub-prior,and there he spent many, many sweetly monotonous days, engaged inmeditation, prayer, and the exercise of his delicate copying, whichlast he regarded even as Fra Angelico regarded his pictures, as anoffering to the Lord. He died in his tranquil cloister in 1471,ninety-one years old.

He left behind him many examples of his beautiful skill as acaligrapher, a Bible in four volumes, an elaborate Mass book,several works by St. Bernard, and the famous De ImitationeChristi, of which last he produced several copies.

This work first appeared, without the name of the author, beforethe Council of Constance in 1415, and the dispute as to theauthorship still rages, some claiming that it was written by JeanGerson, Chancellor of Paris, and merely copied by Thomas àKempis.

Be this as it may, here tradition, true or not, seems goodenough. It is such a book as a gentle, cloistered mystic monkshould and would have written, if he could; and why not grant himhis masterpiece, which seems so exactly like the fruit ofmonotonous convent days enlivened by an intense inner spirituallife?

Two manuscripts of this precious composition remain in thelovely writing of Thomas à Kempis. One is at Louvain, and one atAntwerp.

In the Roman Catholic church of St. Michael's, in Zwolle, is amonument (1867) to Thomas à Kempis, and on the site of themonastery is a monolith to his memory, rather heavy and dour andtoo much like a tombstone, which boldly claims De Imitationefor Thomas, without any hint at a possible dispute about thehonour.

* * *

The Stadhuis of Zwolle is a disappointment. It is of 1447, butthe exterior was modernised at a most unhappy period, 1844. Itcontains a fine Gothic room and some carved roof-supports supposedto be caricatures of the Councillors of Kampen, this town appearingto have had a queer reputation, like that of the mythicalGotham.

On the house of a certain gentleman, a Baron Van der Capellen,1741-1784, the Holland Society of New York have placed a tablet inrecognition of his services during the American War ofIndependence, a graceful and moving tribute to the valiantdead.

* * *

Giethoorn and the neighbourhood are termed (like Amsterdam!)Venices of the North. Needless to say that no part of theNetherlands is like any part of Italy, and the use of the wordVenezia for local inns strikes a false note indeed.

The joy and fun of Giethoorn consisted in punting round thecottages and farms, which are completely encircled by water andreached each by a tiny drawbridge. It is also extremely pretty, inthe full sense of the word and, in a fairy-like fashion, simple,rustic, and tranquil.

The rich trees, the gay flowers and gayer pots and globes ineach immaculate yard and garden, the punts manipulated with suchdexterity, passing up and down with varied loads, make of Giethoornin summer a vivid, luscious, and uncommon scene, so bright are thecolours, so fresh the foliage, so rich-hued the dark water. Thewhole has an ingenuous, almost childish air which conceals thefierce struggle with Nature which makes this loveliness, soperilously snatched from the water, possible.

Here grow the most fragrant of wild flowers in profusion—thyme,mint, valerian, lilies, and all manner of grass and rushes. Thereis something particularly sweet and pleasant about water plants;they never seem to fade, wilt or wither, turn brown or shrivel, butare always erect, blooming, and glossy, bring thoughts of coolnessand repose, of shade and fragrance, and perhaps loneliness andmelancholy.

The inhabitants of Giethoorn make mats of these rushes, andcollect the rich black peat for horticultural use. You can see themat this work, quietly loading the punts or the barges with thesepleasant cargoes, or others, even more idyllic, of fruit or hay,while the herons and the buzzards fly past and away into that low,infinitely distant horizon, broken with those minute clusters oftrees, of tiny steeples that seem so ineffably far off, as if theywere in another world.

2. DRENTHE

PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM, PRINCE OF ORANGE, 1672
by
CARL NETSCHER

A FINE rain was falling in the camp at Bodegraven; the flatswere lost in mist; the farms, with the groups of fine tall treesand roofed stacks, showed in vague outlines through the drippingmoisture.

The inundations caused by the opening of the sluice gates of theProvince of Holland had overspread all the lower ground; soddenmarshes and sheets of water covered farms, pleasure gardens,country houses, villages. On the higher ground the desperateinhabitants had gathered in makeshift dwellings. Now the rain wasswelling the flood which sucked at the very edge of the camp whichcommanded Utrecht, Gouda, and The Hague, facing the lost Provincesof Overijssel, Utrecht, and Guelders, occupied by the French. In afew months the invading army had swept away a rich, fair portion ofthe Low Countries, and no sensible man thought that there was anyhope for the other Provinces; King Louis was a great conqueror.

An old woman led a red cow up the bricked village street; a boyfollowed with a load of vegetables, cabbages, hard and stiff,purple and green, shining in the wet, and big, tightly boundbundles of creamy-white onions. The rain was warm, but so steady,with never a breath of wind. The cow went awkwardly over the brickpavement, swinging her globular, clean sides. A girl came by with abasket of laundry covered with a check cloth. She complained thatthere was no drying of linen this weather, and the old womanreplied with a chuckle:

"It will serve to wash away the blood from the Plaats." For inthis month of September everyone was talking of the murder of theMM. de Witt, and there was very little pity for them, for they werelooked on as the authors of the present ruin. This grim event wasnow some days ago, but on every occasion the peasants spoke of it,and generally they laughed, as they laughed when the corpses of theFrench soldiers, caught by the floods, were washed up among thealders and osiers, bruised against the windmill bases or caught inthe palisades that protected the camp.

The stout girl did not answer. She was thinking of all thebeautifully laundered officers' shirts, neck-clothes, and cravatsin her basket and worrying lest the damp should spoil thestarch.

Bodegraven was choked with refugees, people who had fallen backwith the retreating Dutch army from Utrecht, farmers, peasants, andshopkeepers from Guelders and Overijssel. The gentry had been calledup with their companies of trained bands or had volunteered forservice, and this lesser sort was being carefully recruited. Twoengineers were going about among the crowded houses now, findingthe old men and boys who were yet strong enough to help throw up arampart round the camp to protect it from the rising waters.

The three peasants and the cow left the village and came towardsthe camp. The dripping canvas of the tents was huddled round thescattered farms, compact with stables and outhouses. It rained sosteadily; the very air seemed a palpable thing, it was so full ofmoisture, and the floods and the sky seemed to melt into onemist.

A man rode up from the lower levels, picking his way carefullyalong the yet unsubmerged path bordered by the alders and coarsegrasses. He must have passed the sentries the peasants knew, sothey stepped aside quietly to allow him to proceed, only the oldwoman said:

"This is an ill day."

And the dispatch rider:

"Ill enough."

He passed on and turned towards the little farm in the centre ofthe camp where the flag of the United Provinces, with an orangebanderole, clung limp and damp to the staff.

The dispatch rider was a Frieslander. He brought letters fromCount John Maurice in Groningen, who commanded the Northern forcesof the Republic, to Prince William of Orange, Stadtholder ofHolland and West Friesland, and Commander-in-Chief of the armies ofTheir High Mightinesses, the States-General, in this most perilousmoment.

A group of Blue Guards was outside the farmhouse. TheFrieslander spoke to an officer among them. The Prince was notthere, this man said, but would presently be back; he was out withthe engineers inspecting the dykes and waterways round Woerden.

"How useless it all is," said the Frieslander despondently. "ThePrince might as well go hunting on his German estates."

"You bring bad news, then?"

"Well, the Prince sent orders to Friesland and Groningen to openthe sluices there. And I bring word that they won't do that. AndCount John Maurice can't make them."

"A mutiny?"

"Yes. They won't destroy their own country. And I've heard, too,of the murder of the MM. de Witt. That throws everything on thePrince."

So steadily it rained. The two young men entered the farmhouse,and the dispatch rider shook streams of water from his soddencloak. He was fair as an ear of wheat, big-boned, haggard, withlight eyes rather close set. He spoke with a weary frankness, asone who laboured in a cause for which there was nothing to fearbecause there was nothing to lose.

"Everything on the Prince," he repeated. "Some odium too, eh?Did he go to The Hague?"

"Immediately. And dismissed the magistrates."

They were now in the farmhouse living-room. There was but oneother and that was the stable. All was clean and neat; the whitetiles with drawings in an old wine colour that lined the wallsshone, so did the noble collection of brass and copper pots,despite the pervading damp. A small green-glazed stove was alight,and there was a handful of fire on the open hearth, over which hunga pot from a chain. Some broken red roses, half shattered by therain, beat against the narrow window-panes.

"Are these the Prince's quarters?" asked the Frieslander.

"Yes, save that he sleeps in a tent. You have not been herebefore?"

"No. Count John Maurice sent me because he thought I couldexplain to His Highness how hopeless it was to impose his wishes inthe North," replied the dispatch bearer rather haughtily.

"You have never seen the Prince?" asked the officer of the Bluesthoughtfully.

"No. Of course he can do nothing. The country is lost andruined. My God, if he has had to abandon the Yssel, what is thereleft to defend? And with people in this temper—Princes who can'tkeep order are apt to be limbed themselves."

"His Highness has been threatened with such a fate," replied theother. "But we keep our hearts high and our tongues silent,Mynheer."

"Bah, with the French in Utrecht? Hasn't the time come for plainspeaking?"

"Well, speak plainly to His Highness, then; he never dislikesthat in a man."

"He will have to learn to tolerate it," replied the Frieslander."What is there before him but a pension from France or oblivion inGermany?"

He spoke with the boldness of despair and with that candour thatmen use when they are stripped of every resource. He was a greatlord in his own country, and knew little of the politics that hadhurtled the Seven Provinces into disaster, and little of the manwho had been set up to repair this disaster. In simple sincerity hethought the task impossible and the man who had undertaken itpresumptuous and beaten already. With the invincible Frenchmen (andEngland, mind you, behind them) gripping three provinces, and halfthe rest of the country under water and in a state of anarchy, andsuch an army, and such stores and such a fleet as twenty years'pacifist policy had left available.

No one knew much of William of Orange at this time save that hehad been unfortunate always, orphaned and disinherited before hisbirth, brought up as a prisoner of state, trained by John de Witt,who had supplanted his family, as a severe Republican, and now, ina moment of national despair and fury, restored to the sometimehonours of his house and since a few moments the idol of thedistracted people.

And he was nephew to one, and cousin to the other of thebesieging Kings who were publicly known to have made friendlyovertures to him, sparing no bribe nor persuasion nor threat todetach him from the interests of the United Provinces.

All this was common talk. And the Frieslander, as he waited inthe neat kitchen, in his despair and melancholy, thoughtgloomily:

"Probably he has already made his bargain with the French and isbut standing out for the highest price for the remaining towns.What will he get? As a cadet of the House of Bourbon, as a Princeof the blood royal of England, perhaps a Marshal's baton, perhapsthe hand of a French Princess—and my mission is a farce."

As the dispatch bearer waited, tired, disheartened, endeavouringto dry his wet garments before the stove, he saw the old womandrive the red cow into the stable, followed by the boy with thebasket of vegetables and the girl with the laundry.

They were accompanied by one of the Prince's gentlemen and avalet who examined the cow and the vegetables and counted thelaundry. The Frieslander caught fragments of the whisperedconversation:

"His Highness was delicate in all his senses—he would have milkfrom a red cow, a clean red cow, and vegetables that were firm andfresh. The washing seemed very well, but who knew if His Highnesswould be pleased? He was difficult with his linen."

And so on, with little interjections about the war, and thefloods, and the murder of MM. de Witt.

These trivialities, the outer silence, the encompassing rain,the sweet, homely scene, made the gigantic ruin in which they wereall involved seem grotesque; the triumphant invaders, pressing tothe very verge of the floods that had saved the provinces ofHolland, seemed a monstrous, fantastic dream.

The outer door opened; a young officer entered. A little dog ranbefore him and sat in front of the fire, shivering. The Frieslanderrose, wondering a little, his hard face set and tried, his clothessteaming from the heat of the stove.

"You have dispatches from Groningen?" asked the new-comer.

"Yes, Mynheer." Then, as the other held out his gloved hand: "Tobe delivered to His Highness the Stadtholder."

"Well," said the officer indifferently, "I am theStadtholder."

The dispatches were handed over, not without some confusion onthe part of the Frieslander, for this young man was not in theleast as he had imagined the Prince, but his mistake and hisembarrassment passed unheeded, for William leant against thekitchen table and read his letters as if he had been alone. Thoughpiqued by this ignoring of his presence, the Frieslander waspleased by this occasion to satisfy his curiosity.

The youth whose name had suddenly been covered with a fame thatwas rather fantastic and rather terrible to sober men like theFrieslander, stood but a few feet from the man who was observinghim so intently. He wore the uniform of the Blue Guards andretained his hat.

He was then in his twenty-second year, but appeared older byreason of his stately air of authority and his grave composure.Slight and delicately made, his carriage was thoughtful, as ifevery movement was considered and weighed, his features weresingularly noble, resolute, and serene, aquiline in outline, darkand pale in complexion and shaded by long, rich heavy curls of adense brown touched with auburn, that hung far over his shouldersand gave a marked character to his appearance. His eyes werepowerful, beautiful and uncommon. The Frieslander had noted at oncehis direct and luminous glance, which was now bent on thedispatches of his relative, Count John Maurice of Nassau.

The Frieslander thought how simple, how unheroic it allwas—this little scene that represented the utmost they could do inthe matter of a leader and his entourage; it was not fromheadquarters like these that Louis and Turenne directed theirvictorious campaign.

It was almost childish, almost insignificant and utterlyhopeless, a school lad playing a game. The dispatch-bearer wonderedthat Count John Maurice, who was a veteran warrior of over seventyand had ruled in high places, could defer the supreme command tothis youth.

The Prince finished his letter, and without even glancing at theman who had brought it, he opened a little travelling desk thatstood on a press, and bending over it, still standing, began towrite a quick reply.

The Frieslander was half-amused at this, and said quietly:

"Count John Maurice, sir, wished me to speak with you on thecontents of that letter."

William paused, with the pen in his hand, and looking round,asked, without interest:

"To what end?"

"I suppose, sir, to the end that you might understand the stateof the North—"

"I understand the state of the whole country," answered Williamsimply. "Count John Maurice is very well, but he is old, and whenone is old one loses heart."

"I think one need not be old, Highness, to lose heart now."

At this the Prince asked him, still indifferently, if he were ofthe party of the MM. de Witt, and added:

"A pacifist may be a good man, but in time of war he shows in anill light—"

And continued his letter.

The Frieslander, walking up and down in front of the stove andthe open door that gave into the stable, was moved to speak of thedesperate position of matters, the atrocious peril of the momentand the serious nature of the mutiny in Friesland, speakingstrongly of the things he had seen in his difficult journey fromGroningen and the state of affairs that had rendered possible thevile murder of the MM. de Witt, so that the Prince, with thisclatter in his ears, was moved to desist from his letter and gazeat him in a kind of astonishment. Then, while the Frieslander stillspoke, he turned away and finished and sealed his letter, so thatthe Frieslander fell sullenly silent, feeling he had to deal withone dull or obstinate beyond endurance.

William offered him the letter and told him to return toGroningen with it at once.

"You look in no need of a rest; it is best that it goes atonce—"

"Then what I have said makes no impression on yourHighness?"

"Oh, that. Well, don't say it again—some people might take heedof it."

The body-servant entered from the stable, closing the doorbehind him. He presented the Prince with a pair of gloves thatWilliam, smiling, showed to the Frieslander.

"They were given to me at Oxford two years ago, and they arestill very good—"

As he made this trivial remark he looked steadily at theFrieslander for a second, then added instantly:

"Get back to Groningen and tell them all goes wellhere."

"All goes well, Highness?"

"I trust you," replied the Prince simply, "to say that and tobelieve it true."

The Frieslander picked up his still damp cloak from in front ofthe stove. The servant was putting away the clean linen in a wallcupboard. The Prince prepared to leave, closing his desk, pullingthe gloves over his hands of elegant delicacy. The scene somehow nolonger seemed so insignificant to the Frieslander, but rather as ifit might be the focus of great events.

"What shall I tell Count John Maurice, sir?" he said, as theStadtholder opened the door.

"There is nothing to say beyond what I have written—if theofficers refuse to obey they must be shot out of hand. I have sentthose orders. The sluices must be opened."

He looked again at the Frieslander, then left the farm and wentabout his business, mounting among a group of men and riding awaywith them into the rain and mist.

The Frieslander had no comment to make; he turned back with theanswer to Count John Maurice.

DRENTHE

THE Drenthe is an immense sandy heath that has almost defiedeven Dutch industry. After the fertility of Groningen and Frieslandthese wastes of moorland appear barren and desolate. Not that thereis any lack of farms, villages, and cultivated fields, but theseare all scattered about the endless flat moors and have a lonelylook. The farms are comparatively untidy, the dress of the peoplecomparatively poor and negligent, and the hard-won acres, withdifficulty rescued from the arid stretches of heath, do not bloomwith the luxuriance of the neighbouring Provinces.

The peasants, who have the reputation of being surly andstubborn, wear, when they do wear the native dress, a more simpleand picturesque attire than that of the Frieslander, with noornaments of gold and silver and no coverings for their headsbeyond their thick, fair hair.

It is natural that they should be taciturn and churlish, for theDrenthe offers opportunities for nothing save hard work and conveysan effect of utter isolation.

The lack of trees, windmills, old towns, canals, and watercraftgives a great part of Drenthe a monotony beyond that of any otherpart of the Netherlands, nor are there any sparkling memories norgreat names associated with these miles of heath, or what there areso long ago as to be now forgotten—the days of giants and fairies,of primitive men, and of the Roman occupation; and what remains ofany of these but the sad, dusty objects gathered together behindthe glass cases in the museum at Assen? pitiful relics of a powerthat has crumbled and civilisation that is dust.

Nor are there any of those charming towns which have been thetheatre for great events, nor sites of famous battles, or sieges orsplendid deeds. Assen, the capital, was created out of a village bythe Batavian Republic, at the end of the eighteenth century, andKoevorden, the one-time capital, has sunk to a mere hamlet.

If this dark country, with its prehistoric monuments, containslittle to attract the traveller, it also possesses scant means oftransit. But one line of railway goes across it, and the neat brickroads are here replaced by sandy tracks on which it is difficult towalk or drive. Modernity is, no doubt, fast overcoming theseinconveniences and peculiarities, but enough of them remain toprove correct the old travellers' tales that describe the Drentheas a ferocious and difficult country and the Drenthers as aferocious and difficult people.

The sterile plain is continually broken by regular mounds ortumuli of prehistoric and unknown origin, and there are several ofthe mysterious Hunnebedden, as sinister and ancient asStonehenge, and locally attributed to the rough hurtlings ofhuge-handed giants.

At Borger there are eleven of these monuments, at Emmen nine, atAdoorn eight, at Anloo seven. In all there are fifty-one of theseHunnebedden, most of which belong to the Government or theProvince.

It does not stretch one's credulity to credit the presence ofgiants in the Drenthe or that these primeval works were made bytheir hands. The form is always the same—two long stones with oneacross, covering urns full of ashes. Most of these have long sincebeen desecrated in the search for possible treasure, and in manycases the stones have been pushed by the steady drive of up-growingvegetation out of their position, so that they lie in shapelessheaps. In some the original form remains, i.e., a block at eitherend forms a chamber or gallery.

The stones are not shaped by hand, nor do they bear the merestscratching of an inscription—like the dim period to which theybelong, they are inarticulate.

It would be interesting to know where these stones came from(there are certainly no quarries near, nor ever could have been)and how far they were dragged for erection on the gloomy heaths."Glacier-borne boulders from Scandinavia," is the scientificpronouncement, but this tells one little. There are said to havebeen many more besides these remaining, and there are a greatnumber of similar erections in France, Sweden, North America, andAfrica.

The Middle Ages, naturally, accused evil spirits of fashioningthese uncouth temples and the Drenthers of worshipping therein. TheCouncil of Arles (452) and the Council of Tours (587) fulminatedagainst them as of infernal origin.

A certain Jean Picardt, one time a pastor in Koevorden,published a book about the Hunnebedden in the year of ourRestoration, 1666, in which he describes and draws the giganticmonsters whom he supposes to have built these rude, grand, andnameless memorials.

These dark and huge phantoms seem fitting authors of thesedesolate heaps of stones, and the pastor of Koevorden had goodexcuse for his fantasy.

Modern research cannot clear up the matter much moresatisfactorily than the story-tellers. The most solid informationappears to be that which ascribes the Hunnebedden to theefforts of the early Celts to celebrate some honoured leader—butwhat labour, in those fierce times, to undertake for a mere chief,and how many great men in a small tract of country!

Of course a great deal has been written about theHunnebedden (Hun, death, bedden, bed, tomb),and those who will may wander in the mazes of wise men'sspeculations.

And those who will not may be content with the giants as sominutely described by the good Jean Picardt.

In either case it cannot be denied that, giants, evil spirits ornot, these massive heaps of stones cast a sinister gloom over acountry already sufficiently desolate.

Nothing is easier to imagine than some awful procession windingacross the sterile heath, beneath a leaden sky, bearing someforlorn sacrifice to be immolated with unspeakable rites on thedreary stones of the Hunnebedden.

* * *

Assen is clean, spacious, open and comfortable, possessing afine park, in which Louis Napoleon intended to raise ahunting-lodge, and the museum mentioned before, in which arepreserved all the relics found in peat-bed and sandy moor, "tumuli"and Hunnebedden.

This accumulation of the first vestiges of human life in the LowCountries, of the Bronze Age and the Romans, is precious to thearchaeologist, but to the ordinary visitor it has but a dusty,charnel-house flavour. Even the objects of beauty, such as theItalian cameos and jewels, take on a melancholy, tarnished air soclose to these hideous flints, murderous, sacrificial knives, andpowdering, blackening bones.

There was a large nunnery at Assen, suppressed at theindependence of the Seven Provinces. The Provincial Office is onthe site. This reminds us of the curious Coat of arms of Assen—theVirgin and Child—bespeaking the greater toleration of the timeswhen the Drenthe was made into a separate Province.

In the days of the States-General, when the divisions wereZeeland, Holland, Utrecht, Groningen, Friesland, and Overijssel, theDrenthe was part of Groningen, and belonged to the Friesland, andthere does not appear much reason for giving it a separateidentity. It was the scene of ceaseless internecine warfare amonglocal lords, being too far north and too desolate to attract muchattention from the various powers governing the Netherlands. Whenagriculture was more primitive and less was known about thedevelopment of unlikely land, the peasantry must have largelysubsisted on turf-cutting, which is still a considerable but notvery lucrative employment.

The Town Hall at Assen is part of an ancient church boasting theremains of a thirteenth-century cloister; for the rest there isnothing out of the way in this matter-of-fact, quiet littleprovincial town, that does not seem to express either the spirit ofthe Drenthers or the atmosphere of the Drenthe.

* * *

Neither does Koevorden, so much older and more, as it were,indigenous, prove anything but a disappointment.

The ancient capital of the Drenthe has a modern Town Hall rindan ugly church of 1641 with a humped back and a trifling spire, andthe streets are without character or interest.

There are, however, the usual handsome ramparts adorned withlofty trees, showing the one-time importance of the town, which issupposed to have originated in a Roman camp.

In 1024 Koevorden was the residence of the Counts of Drenthe,fierce and arrogant potentates who kept a firm hand on theirundrained marshes and petty heaths.

Their overlord was, by virtue of a grant of the Emperor HenryII, the Bishop of Utrecht, but his rights were ignored by theCounts of Drenthe, and for hundreds of years the Bishops were tooharried by troubles nearer home to be able to enforce them, suchattempts as were made, as in 1288, when the Utrecht men crossed thefrozen marshes to attack Koevorden, being unsuccessful.

At the end of the fourteenth century, however, the rebel Countof Drenthe was besieged by Bishop Frederic of Blankenheim, who,after a struggle of six weeks, reduced his vassal to obedience.

In 1552, the town passed out of the power of the Bishops and wasoccupied by the troops of Charles V. At the end of the War ofIndependence it was fortified by Prince Maurice (1592), hecompleting the ramparts which had been begun by the Spanishcommander, Everard Ens. Despite these defences, Koevorden, owing totreachery, fell to the Bishop of Münster in the Ramp jaar(1672), but was soon retaken by Rapenhaupt, a success whichinspired Vondel with some punning verses.

Rapenhaupt followed the example of the old Bishop of Utrecht andbrought his troops up over the frozen marshes.

The town was soon after fortified by Coehoorn. These rampartswere dismantled in the nineteenth century together with so manyothers in the Low Countries. It is a pity that some at least of thework of the great engineer could not have been preserved even whenit was useless; both patriotism and curiosity would have beengratified by such an action.

Charming as the walks are on the bastions of these old towns, aspecimen of the elaborate and superb work of Coehoorn would havebeen of supreme interest.

Outside Assen are these same bogs over which the Episcopal andthe States Armies once advanced, worth traversing now for the sakeof the pretty villages, like Dalen, Emmen, with the Celtic remainsand wooden bridges supposed to be Roman, and the drained marshesand cleared bogs, another tribute to the energy and industry of theDutch.

Fine crops now flourish where noisome swamps once took heavytoll of health and life, and new villages have risen where oncethere was a dismal stretch of stagnant marsh. However, all theseparts of the Drenthe are still somewhat difficult of access, andthe traveller who wishes to study this peculiar country will haveto have patience and leisure and be able to defy fatigue.

Much of the Drenthe is even now sad, dark, and uncultivated,despite all the efforts of engineers and farmers. Poisonous addersabound round the lonely tumuli, and immense circular excavations,attributed to witches escaped from hell, give an added sinistertouch to the dismal landscape.

The prosaic explanation of these queer pits is that they weredug by ancient Celts shivering from the flaying north winds as somepossible protection from the bitter weather, or else were intendedfor cisterns in which to gather the rain, these gloomy plainshaving no other water.

A terrible country must the Drenthe have been in those days, andone wonders why these Celts, instead of labouring in these dismalregions to obtain water, shelter, build graves and altars, did notwander further afield in search of more hospitable regions.

Some villages, such as Eext and Gieten, are placed in the midstof a veritable "blasted heath" such as might have been relished bythe witches in Macbeth. At Borger and Gasselte it is littlebetter, nor do the prehistoric burying-places which abound enliventhe impressive desolation of this peaty desert.

The villages themselves are pleasant enough, and the greenfields from which the inhabitants wrest their living serve toscreen them from the bleak monotony of the plains.

* * *

Indeed these villages present another side of the Drenthe andrepresent her most substantial claim to glory.

They have been painted by Wynants, by Ruysdael, by Hobbema, themost poetic of the painters of the Netherlands, the last two of themost poetic painters of the world.

Meindert Hobbema (born 1638) has been claimed by Antwerp andHaarlem, among other towns, but the Drenthers maintain that he wasa native of Koevorden, and there seems no reason why they shouldnot be allowed this honour. Certain it is that he painted in theDrenthe and that at Rolde, Eext, Gieten, Gasselte, and Borger youmay still see, concealed from the neighbouring wastes by clustersof superb trees, the cottages with the low roofs, the sandy paths,the dark undergrowths, the rich foliage, the mills, the fields thatHobbema with such spontaneous simplicity so lovingly copied.

The more precise, mannered, and characteristic features of theother Provinces, which other painters so skilfully turned toaccount, did not appeal to Hobbema as did these humble solitudes,and while they were engaged in depicting the joys of comfort andprosperity, Hobbema was evolving poetic beauty from these lonelyand neglected villages of the Drenthe.

The fresh brightness of Hobbema's verdure, the dewy depth of hisskies, the tender radiance of the beams of light that penetrate hisfloating clouds, and the sad darkness of his forests, his pure anddelicate colour, make these early essays in landscape painting someof the most beautiful that art has yet attained.

The freedom that the Netherlands enjoyed at the end of thesixteenth century at once affected pictorial art as well as everyother aspect of national activity. Religious painting came to anabrupt end; Protestantism dispensed with the service of the Arts,and the grandiose representation of Biblical and classic scenes forKings and Emperors also went out of date. The more modest patronsof painting in the Netherlands asked for nothing more than theirown portrait, a civic banquet or city council or guild meeting, anda very occasional allegorical picture celebrating some greatnational event such as the Peace of Westphalia.

Hence we have, all at once, as it were, a bewildering richnessof genre pictures, landscapes, interiors and still life; allsubjects that, one feels, Dutch and Flemings had been alwayslonging to depict, as witness the exquisite backgrounds in theearly altar-pieces of this school, and the delicate care expendedon the detail of robes and a chance accessory, such as birds,flowers, musical instruments or examples of goldsmiths' art.

There is something very lovely and refreshing in these firstexpressions of a free art; you feel that these men were, for thefirst time, perhaps, choosing their own subjects and executing themin their own fashion, and this rustic life, these lowly scenes thatnever before had been considered worthy of celebration, possess acharm as fragrant as it is individual.

John Wynants (1600-1670), who was the teacher of so manycelebrated Dutch artists, came to the Drenthe to sketch thenegligent villages clustering without plan or order round theflower-filled graveyard and the rustic church, the warm-huedbricks, the immense roofs, the creamy plaster, the old red walls, amedley of cottages and hovels without streets or any division butthe sandy paths leading to the heath.

Among his pupils were Adrian Vandervelde, the genre painter, andPhilip Wouverman (1620-1668), who also painted in the Drenthe, anddrew the figures and horses against the backgrounds of hismaster.

This delicious painter lived in obscurity and neglect, and issaid to have died of chagrin at his failure and to have burnt allhis sketches and pictures that his sons might not be inspired bythem to follow a vocation that he had found so disastrous. Hisyounger brothers, Peter and John, were his pupils and imitators.Other writers assert that Wouverman was rescued from his distressesby a priest (he being a Romanist), and that he was in sufficientlyeasy circ*mstances to be able to dower his daughter well.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the quiet and exquisitecharm of Philip Wouverman (whose glory belongs properly to Haarlem,his native place), and however keen his disappointments, his lifecannot have been wholly unhappy, so exquisite a delight must hehave taken in his work and so industriously did he apply himself tohis art. There is not one of his numerous canvases that shows anysign of haste or carelessness; the grace and spirit of thecomposition are equalled only by the beauty of the finish.

His subjects are the subjects of every day—the farrier's shop,the inn, the encampment, the hunt. Soldiers, cavaliers and horses,all depicted with vivacity and truth, are usually the principalfigures in his designs. In the Drenthe you can still see thesesmithies, these inn doors, these sandy wastes with stunted trees,perhaps more untouched than in any other part of the country,though Wouverman painted mainly in Holland and principally theenvirons of Haarlem, then very different to what they are now.These pictures are true history; they are like a diary written byan artist, the notes of a loving spectator on the life of histimes.

In the diary of Constantin Hugyens, the younger, written a fewyears after Wouverman's death, you may find scenes described in thecampaign of 1672 that read like pictures by this deliciousartist.

Wouverman left over eight hundred pictures, besides painting thefigures in the landscapes of other artists such as Wynants andRuysdael. In the Mauritshuis are some superb examples of thisartist: "The Arrival at the Inn" (No. 214), "The Departure from theInn" (No. 215), "The Falcon Party" (No. 216), "The Hay Cart" (No.218), "A Great Battle" (No. 219)—the gem of the collection,perhaps, "A Camp" (No. 220), and "Huntsmen Resting" (No. 221), and"Huntsmen Halting" (No. 222).

These few pictures give an excellent idea of the range and powerof Wouverman's brush, and afford most valuable data for the studentof Dutch life in the seventeenth century.

Another painter, also belonging to Haarlem, may be mentionedhere, as he was inspired by the Drenthe before he went to paint thesullen grandeur of the dark cascades of Norway.

This is Jacob van Ruysdael (1628-1682), also little appreciatedduring his lifetime, when these representations of homely sceneswere ill-considered, but now held to be the greatest landscapepainter of the seventeenth century. His views, such as that of hisnative town (Mauritshuis, No. 155), and that of the Vyverberg (No.534, same collection), are historically of supreme interest, aswell as magnificent paintings, but his art rises to the greatestheights in his lonely, rushing torrents, his dark woods, cloudyskies and stormy seas, which are touched by the beauty of a poetryboth strong and fine.

His "Cornfield" (Champ de Blé) is known to have beenpainted in the Drenthe.

* * *

In the drenthe we miss the Stadhuis, which is an inevitablefeature of even small villages in the other Provinces. Here theprincipal inn boasted a large, always comfortable and sometimeselegant room which was reserved for the Municipal gatherings andthe transaction of local affairs. This custom is disappearing, buthas not yet gone, and even a few years ago travellers ofdistinction were received by the innkeeper in these beautifulcouncil halls.

The villages of the Drenthe have always been celebrated for ryebread and ham, delicacies by no means easily obtainable in everyNetherlands inn.

There are the remains of several grand castles in the Drenthemore massive than the neat slot of the neighbouringProvinces. That which belonged (and may do still) to the Counts ofHeiden Reinestein, Saarwoud, near Zuidlaren, is 'typical of theothers of which few exist in habitable condition. This building isof eighteenth-century origin, but the estate and the magnificentwoods are very old.

There is a heronry in an avenue of majestic trees, and nothingis more pleasing than to see the birds in spring flying to and fromtheir nests in the budding branches that trace so intricate apattern against the pellucid blue, against which the elegant birdsshow with the vivid precision of a Japanese print.

* * *

There is little more for the casual visitor to say of theDrenthe, though there is enough interest in the curious Province toserve for many a long study and many a flight of fantasticspeculation; the genius loci is strong enough here, thoughhis aspect is slightly sinister.

Those sympathetic towards this dreary landscape, these cheerfulhamlets, each an oasis in a desert of heath, these snatched morselsof cultivated ground, these sandy paths and dark acres of peat,these huddled farms, so pleasant in line and colour, these obscureand awful burial-mounds and stones of a vanished nameless people,might find an intolerable fascination in the Drenthe and be able toevoke here many shapes of wonder and beauty.

3. GUELDERS

THE ENCAMPMENT, 1640
by
PHILIP WOUVERMAN

A HIGH wind was blowing across the desolate, dun plain. Thegreat tearing clouds and low sandhills seemed involved in onestormy darkness; the tents fluttered against the strong poles; theforked ends of the red-and-blue flag of the Republic beat outvividly against the murk of the sky; the tents in the distance wereblurred with eddies of sand.

Beneath the flag a wreath and a can on a branch showed that herewine was for sale, and a group of horsem*n on heavy prancingsteeds, gleaming white and grey, had paused before the ragged door.A richly dressed cavalier with a pennoned lance took the last glassof wine from an officer on foot, for the trumpeter on the curvetingbay was sounding the blast for departure.

The soldier, kissing the buxom young wine-seller, made ready toleap into the saddle; others controlled the kicking, leapinghorses, which seemed excited by the wind and the trumpet, andprepared for the march. A beggar woman, crouched on the ground,received in her outstretched hat the alms a lady riding pillionbehind a cavalier cast her; dogs hung round for the pickings of thecamp.

Three soldiers played at cards on a drum, and near them otherswere sleeping on the hard ground, regardless of the chill wind andthe approaching storm.

The little troop continued their way across the sandy heath,galloping quickly through the scattered encampment; the gay coloursof the pennon and tassel on the lance of the young nobleman who ledthem dared the darkness of the gloomy day. Behind them, on the flatDutch country, the bright Dutch flags struggled with the northernwind.

Drops of heavy rain began to fall; the scrub was bent flat by agale; the outline of a walled town loomed in dark gold on thedistant horizon.

The young officer further urged his gleaming steed. His plumesand his curls flew out behind him under the radiant silk of hispennon. He had dispatches for Prince Frederic Henry in his pocket.He was glad that he would reach the town to deliver them before thestorm and the night caught up with his little troop.

The clouds broke behind the city and the sombre ramparts showedgrim against a streak of light. The Orange standard above thecitadel caught a ragged beam as it fought the wind against thepiled-up tempest clouds.

GUELDERS

"High in valour,
poor in wealth,
Sword in hand,
That is the motto of Gelderland."

IN writing of Guelders as one of the Provinces of theNetherlands, one is reminded forcibly of what a famous historianhas called getting "map bound," meaning that modern maps andancient history go ill together.

The old history of Guelders, i.e., the Duchy of Guelders and theCountship of Zutphen, has as little to do with the story of theUnited Provinces as have the stories of Juliers, Cleves, Münster,or the Palatinate; shifting frontiers, changing masters, endlesscombats, and that vague over-lordship of the Empire make thehistory of States like Guelders difficult indeed to write withinthe arbitrary confines of a modern map.

The scenery of Guelders is different indeed from that of theother Provinces. The flats of Holland and Zeeland, the moors andmarshes of Brabant and Overijssel, the low, rolling hills andrunning streams of Limburg here give way to highlands clothed inheather, rich woods, and the fertile plains watered by the Rhineand the Yssel.

The people are as individual as their surroundings, handsome,powerful, and tall; in the pure stock, the best type of Germanicmanhood. They look of the race of Siegfried, whose own town,Xanten, is not so much further along the Rhine.

This is not to say that Guelders, though the frontier State('tis but a step across a road and be in Germany), is notessentially Dutch, but rather to say that to call Cleves, Münster,etc., German is but to use a name. These peoples were of the samestock, and it is mere hazard that sends one under one flag, oneunder another.

It would be a delightful task to write the history of Gueldersby itself, with due regard to these same neighbours of Cleves,Münster, Utrecht, Brabant, but with no obligation towards thehistory of the United Provinces into which Guelders becametechnically merged by the Union of Utrecht.

There are abundant materials for such a task, for the archivesof Guelders are particularly rich and well kept, and M. Nijhoff,one-time keeper of these, has a monumental "Geschiedenis vanGuelderland," in which all the spadework is accomplished.

In the many glorious old castles, in the towns of Arnhem,Nijmegen, Zalt Bommel, Gorkum, Elburg, Zutphen, in the villages ofthe Betuwe and Veluwe, in the royal Palace of Het Loo, in suchprincely residences as Middachten and Voorst, is a wealth ofmaterial so overwhelming that to devote but a few pages to Gueldersseems an impertinence.

This material, though of absorbing interest, is largely local,however, and Guelders, lovely and luxurious though it be, has notthat intense European significance, that immense individuality ofsome of the other Provinces. These smiling glades and this rollingcampaign, these stately villas and mansions, one after the other,lack the poignant charm, the unique atmosphere of the melancholyflats, the dykes and the canals.

Dutch people tell you, with a certain ingenuous pride, thatGuelders is "different" from the rest of their country, that it islike Scotland, and that it is a pity foreigners do not more oftenvisit such a delightful spot.

Of course Guelders is not like Scotland, any more than Amsterdamis like Venice, or Edinburgh like Athens, or any other suchgrotesque comparison. It is a most individual tract of land, verystately, fertile, and given a dignified, almost haughty air by thesuccession of the seats of the exclusive, reserved, old Dutcharistocracy, and those of the opulent, cultured and conservativemerchant and professional classes, who, one after another, filltown and country of upper Guelders with houses differing certainlyin size and importance, but all shining with a lustre ofprosperity.

In this part of Guelders the landscape has the same patricianair as the houses; it seems a noble's park or a Prince's huntingground. The avenues, glades and alleys are such as we are familiarwith in the indigo and blackish-green landscapes on seventeenth-and eighteenth-century tapestries, showing royal hunting partiesand elegant fêtes champêtres.

The neat little map given in Professor Geyl's Holland andBelgium does much to efface the impression made by moderngeography, and defines the real character of such frontier-disputedareas as Guelders.

This map shows the Netherlands in 1550 and the then boundariesof the Holy Roman Empire, which extended as far as the Scheldt, andincluded Antwerp, Brussels, the whole of Hainault, and reachedCambrai. Flanders and Artois, though fiefs of France, were held bythe Dukes of Burgundy, and therefore, in reality, united to theother Provinces ruled nominally by the Emperor.

Here you see the Duchy of Guelders, one among many such duchiesand lordships, Cleves, Bentheim, Münster, Limberg, Juliers,Utrecht, Brabant, and so forth, and you get a clearer idea of theposition, status, and the likely internecine warfare of these smallstates than is possible from any modern map. Remembering howdubious and weak was the over-lordship of the Emperor, and howpowerful these Bishops, Counts, Dukes, and Earls became withintheir own limits, one gains some conception of the endlesscomplications of the medieval policies of this portion ofEurope.

The cartographer has drawn a red line across his map fromDunkirk to Olken in Juliers, showing that above this, Dutch, andbelow, French, were the spoken languages at this period.

This line cuts just below Brussels, and includes most of thecountry now known for the last hundred years as Belgium, beforethat, as the Spanish or Austrian Netherlands, thereby proving howarbitrary are the present frontiers, and how essentially thesepeople, with a common history, are one, and how natural should be asolid union between them.

Here we are indeed in deep water—how far are the characters ofpeoples determined and nationalities built up by governments,religions, traditions?

The Netherlands were certainly one group or union of littleStates till the Revolt against Spain, and until then it is indeeddifficult to disentangle the story of one from the story ofanother; but the ten Provinces that remained Catholic and Spanishappeared to develop soon a different character from the seven thatformed the United Provinces, and any attempt at their reunion hasso far proved disastrous. In the same way, Guelders, in joiningHolland, has become different from the other Germanic Duchies, suchas Juliers and Cleves, and is solidly enough part of the modernKingdom of the Netherlands.

* * *

The early history of Guelders is in the highest degreepicturesque and romantic. It seems to have been the cradle of muchTeutonic legend and tales of magic and chivalry—an atmospherewholly different from that of the other Provinces. No epic oftrade, adventures, discovery, no tale of great art or patientintention comes from Guelders. Here were the nobles, the knights,the soldiers, Germanic heroes of the Nibelungenlied and the earlyante-Christian days. The very name is said to have come from aferocious dragon, surely near kin to the one that guarded thetreasure which came to lie at the bottom of the Rhine, which flowsthrough Guelders, which devasted the land in the manner of suchbeasts, bellowing the while: "Gelre! Gelre!"

Two noble brothers, Wichard and Luppold, dispatched the dragon,to the accompaniment of a terrible tempest, and gave his ferociouscry "Gelre!" as a name to the land over which they were gratefullyoffered sovereignty.

And then there is the tale of Beatrix and Elius, placed inNijmegen, which is the tale of the Swan Knight, the GermanLohengrin, and Adela and Balderic and many another, until we cometo the early Counts of Guelders for long of the House of Nassau wholived lustily and joyously, after the manners of their kind andtime, fighting continuously against their neighbours, mainlyagainst Utrecht and Brabant in these early times, the Lord of thelatter state building Bois-le-Duc (charmingly called "Boy'ld Duck"by an ancient English traveller) to withstand them.

Utrecht and Guelders fought savagely over the Veluwe, Bishop andDuke giving each as good as he got, and devastating between themthe prize for which they strove. Reinald I, Count of Guelders, wasa friend of Adolf of Nassau, that Emperor whose knightly figureshows still above his lovely house in Nuremberg, and whose statuerises again so magnificently on the wooded banks of the Lahn in hisnative Province of Nassau; who never had any money in his purse,but always his sword by his side.

The following glimpse of this Nassau brings before one thesespirited and violent days.

Adolf, friend as well as ally of Reinald, was, in one of hismany battles, captured and brought before his enemy, the Duke ofBrabant, after having valiantly defended himself against fiveBrabant knights.

"Who are you?" asked the Duke of his dishevelled prisoner.

"I am the Count of Nassau. And who are you?"

"I am the Duke of Brabant, five of whose finest knights you havejust overcome."

"I am sorry for that—it was for you I had my sword sharpened,and through the whole battle have I looked for you. Had I foundyou, you would have shared the fate of your knights."

For this bold answer the Duke gave him his freedom withoutransom.

Reinald II was the first Duke of Guelders, and in 1331 he sentthree Guelders' nobles, Otto van Kuyk, Ricold van Heeswijk andJacob van Mierlaer, to England, to demand the hand of Eleanor,sister of Edward III. The English King gave his sister ten thousandpounds sterling as dowry, and her husband settled on her, out ofthe revenues of the Beluwe, fourteen thousand pounds Flemish (orgulden) for her pin money.

With gorgeous pomp the marriage was celebrated at Nijmegen, andthe bride's residence was afterwards at Roosendaal (Valley ofRoses), which the young princess must have found sweetly named.

This daughter of the murdered Edward and the wanton Isabellaseems to have been one of those gentle, pious, noble women, thoseveritable "doves in the eagle's nest" who bloomed in the fiercehouseholds of the Middle Ages. She is said to have foretold to herwarlike husband the extinction of his line, and with the burial ofher two sons, Reinald and Edward, beside their forefathers in theCloister of Gravendaal in 1371, her prophecy was fulfilled. TheDukedom of Guelders passed to the house of Juliers, as theCountship of Holland passed to the house of Hainault.

On the death of Reinald IV, childless, in 1418, the line ofJuliers came to an end, and Guelders passed to the son of hisniece, Maria van Arkel, Arnald of Egmont, who was miserably deposedand brutally treated by his son, Adolf, like Reinald III, who waswalled up in the thick walls of Roosendaal, where a mere ray oflight penetrated, for ten years by a brother desirous of hishonours.

Charles of Egmont, third of his house, and the most interestingpersonality among the Lords of Guelders, was the last of his familyand of the independent rulers of Guelders.

There was an attempt, in 1672, to revive the Dukedom of Gueldersby offering it to William of Orange in gratitude for deliverancefrom the French, but the stern Republicanism of the other Provincescaused William III prudently to decline the graceful compliment.One of the most charming of Romeyn de Hooge's elegant plates showsthe young Captain refusing the ancient Dukedom, which, hundreds ofyears before, had belonged to his ancestors of Nassau.

From the Union of Utrecht the romantic, warlike, and lovelyDuchy joined her more grim, sober, and businesslike neighbours,among whom she took premier place; but she still seems, to astranger's eyes at least, the spoiled child of that illustriousconfederation, and to have preserved her own character, which ishardly that of the stern, Republican, Calvinist Netherlands.

* * *

Schenck, the key between Holland and Germany, Grone, the theatreof the terrible siege of 1672, Tolhuys, the scene of themuch-vaunted passage of the Rhine in the same year, which, however,Napoleon described as "a fourth-rate military exploit," the veryancient towns of Doesburg and Doetinchem, the intensely interestingfortified harbour of Elburg on the shores of the Zuyder Zee,Oldenzaal, with St. Plechem and the Hunnebedden and Almelo, thevillages in the Betuwe, all deserve, as the saying goes, "a book tothemselves." Guelders is indeed full of fascinating andinexhaustible interest, and a few brief notes can do no more thanindicate some of the principal beauties, first among which come thecastles, which are not quite like any other castles anywhereelse.

Roosendaal has pride of place here. It is the most enchantingexample of an old battlemented castle turned into a noble's countryseat, and is a piquant medley of massive strength and fastidiouselegance, rising from a spacious moat in the midst of a noble park,where baroque bridges, grottoes, cascades, and statues combinecharmingly with the old avenues and glades, the massive beech treesand the wooded heights that form the background of Roosendaal.

From one side the Castle still presents a completely medievalappearance and has the air of lonely grandeur, of rather remotesplendour associated with what once has been and is no more. At onetime a residence of the Counts and Dukes of Guelderland, Roosendaalhas the attraction of having been long in the possession of onenoble family, who have spared nothing in embellishing theirsplendid residence.

Eleanor, duch*ess of Guelders, was not the only English Princessto live at Roosendaal; here often visited Mary Stewart, afterwardsQueen of England, and a needlework screen, some pious meditationsin holograph and a bizarre rococo summer-house are still preservedas memorials of the gentle and rather pathetic wife of William III.This monarch was also a frequent visitor to Roosendaal, as indeedhe was to most of these aristocratic Guelders châteaux.

Biljoen, considered the most ancient Castle in the Province,though rebuilt about eight hundred years ago, was largelydismantled and spoiled on being sold to a stranger about half acentury ago, but still has a massive and grandiose effect.Sonsbeek, of the family of the Haeckerens, which name recalls oneof the fiercest feuds in Guelders, is a delicious, formal mansionwith opulent gardens and a Belvedere from which one can see overthe Germanic plains to where the city of Cleves lies like an ornatecrown. Voorst is the gorgeous little baroque Castle presented byWilliam III to Arnold von Keppel, Earl of Albermarle. Among othersare Cannenberg and Oldenwaller and Doorwerth, now a most admirablemilitary museum; but indeed the castles and châteaux of Guelders,especially in that favourite part so adapted to the stately huntsof former days, called absurdly enough "Dutch Switzerland," are ofthe most attractive charm, variety, and interest, and give a uniqueair of patrician opulence to this corner of the Province.

One that is typical of all, yet that excels all, is Middachten,built on a Roman foundation. It was destroyed by the Spaniards,1625, and rebuilt by the son of Anna van Middachten, Renier vanRaesfelt, in 1640. Thirty years later it was again rebuilt byGodard van Reede from designs by Vinckhoorncool, possibly thearchitect of the massive Stadhuis of Enkhuizen.

At the end of the nineteenth century Middachten, through themarriage of Jacoba van Reede with Count John Bentinck, came intothe possession of the present princely owners, whose family is sohonourably connected with the story both of England and theNetherlands.

The above Godard van Reede de Ginkle was the first Earl ofAthlone, 1630-1703, William III's general and friend,Commander-in-Chief in Ireland in 1690-1692, whose skill, judgment,humanity, and honour were admitted even by his enemies, but whoappears to be too little valued by posterity.

Not only was he a bold and vigorous soldier, a sagacious andprompt commander, but he added to these high qualities generosity,patience, and moderation, and a winning personality. One thinksmore would have been heard in English history of this great andhonourable soldier had he chanced to be English instead ofDutch.

Above the dark-brick front of Middachten can be seen the arms ofVan Reede and Raesfelt. Black-bodied griffons support the circularshield, above which is a coronet and below the motto Maloimorquam foedari.

The whole effect of Middachten is so exactly that of period, ofcountry, of an atmosphere; it is so completely what it might be, asit were, so perfect within the limits of its own possibilities,that few, even among more pretentious or beautiful old houses orpalaces, could be more satisfying.

It has the most beautiful approach possible, the immense avenueof limes, the Middachten Allée, which is one of the mostwonderful in the world—miles of straight gigantic trees whosebranches, woven together overhead, conceal the sky and provide adelicious green shade on the most glaring day.

Middachten evokes a thousand memories of the past, of thestately formalism, the rich restraint, the ornate, artificial,dignified taste of the seventeenth century. The prim chateau risessheer from the moat and is approached by the most modest ofbridges. The gardens contain all you are sure they mustcontain—orangery, Zonnewijzer, Jardins de broderies, gladesof exquisite grass, beds of exotic flowers, a wall curiously toppedby an ivy edge, every ingenious device of the formal garden, allsevere yet opulent, quiet but luxurious, the very flavour of theseventeenth century, subtly pervaded with that melancholy whichsavours of all that is yesterday, all that lives more in the memorythan in reality.

The completion to the almost poignant fascination of Middachtenis given by the blue and white flag that flies above the chateauwhen the noble owner is in residence.

The interior is, of its style, superb, and contains more thanthe usual amount of curious and historic treasures.

To see Middachten is to have a momentary but perfect illusion ofreturning to the beloved past, so endearing and so sweetlymelancholy.

* * *

Arnhem, to those who know something of her history, must atfirst sight be a complete surprise. This gracious and lovely city,so extremely pleasant and charming, bears no traces of hervicissitudes, save in her ancient church and her ancientGemeente huis. No memorials here of sieges, battles, revoltsor such tempestuous episodes. The old town has completelydisappeared, and there have taken its place wide streets, elegantgardens, commodious dwellings, the oldest of which have no medievalflavour, but indeed rather a Jane Austen Sunday afternoon air ofrefined ease and comfort.

Arnhem, which, despite its modernity, is very attractive, isdelightfully situated on the Lower Rhine and surrounded by the mosttempting of suburbs, such as Sonsbreek, Reeberg, and Velp, and inspring and summer seems literally wreathed in flowers and emboweredin trees, so prodigally bestowed are gardens, public and private,and groups, avenues and bouquets of the most graceful trees.

The town has no provincial air, but seems rather a miniaturecapital of some tiny kingdom, and the Rhine gives it both romanceand dignity.

And after having said so much, there is little more to be saidabout Arnhem, which indeed does not solicit the stranger'sadmiration.

* * *

Arnhem, owing to the modern and nondescript style of thehandsome houses, has no special Dutch character, and even thechurch is not of the usual Netherlandish flavour, for the interiorhas not been whitewashed, but left in the original soft grey stone,or else the plaster has been recently removed.

This church (St. Eusebius) is very splendid and large, built inpure, though late Gothic (1425). The brick exterior is ornamentedwith sandstone, which, like that used in the Cathedral atBois-le-Duc, has miserably crumbled. The tower is majestically highand contains a chime of bells of 1650.

There is the usual gorgeous organ, the usual gorgeous pulpit,and a curious gloomy mural tablet to Josse Sasbout (died 1546),Chancellor of Charles V in Guelders. This graceful work is by oneColyn de Nole, and skilfully interprets the dismal philosophy ofthe time, De Dood makt groot en klein, etc.

The church contains, besides this, one magnificent tomb which isthe most important memorial of the past in Arnhem, and to some themost interesting object in the festive little town.

This is the tomb of Charles of Egmont, last Duke of Guelders,which has been recently restored. It stands in the centre of thechoir, where it looks drearily out of place, as such monuments doin Calvinistic churches, but is itself of rich beauty and endlessfascination to those who know something of the man itcommemorates.

All is in the grand style, lofty, ornate, eloquent. On thepedestal of black marble the Duke in white marble rests at fulllength, his hands clasped, bareheaded, but for the rest fullyarmed. The figure is of the most expressive dignity; the smooth,aesthetic, refined and charming face appears as if taken directlyfrom the life. The recumbent knight is surrounded by six smalllions, who each holds one of his lordship's arms on a shield, thesebeing in the most admirable proportion and fitting harmoniouslyinto the general design, in a manner that heraldic blazons do notalways achieve.

Round the pedestal are bas-reliefs, in white marble, sixteenalabaster Apostles and Evangelists executed in a flowing,grandiose, and rich manner. This combination of black and whitegives a sombre, funereal effect in fine keeping with the melancholyof a tomb. These reliefs are by Gerard Lummen van Venlo.

The details of the Duke's harness, the helmet by his side, areworked with exquisite skill, and the whole monument, which is,since the restoration in 1913, beautifully kept, is one of the mostsuperb and complete of the Middle Ages.

Of even more peculiar and, as it were, personal interest, is thelife-size figure of the Duke kneeling under a canopy attached to apillar about twenty feet from the ground and wearing the armourthat Charles of Guelders wore in life.

This figure is known to have been in this position from 1636,the date of the frame or canopy, and the singularity of theposition has been a cause of comment to many visitors and evoked acuriosity not to be satisfied locally, where indeed no interest isdisplayed in either the Duke or his image.

The explanation, however, would appear to be simple. It wascustomary in the Middle Ages to hang a knight's armour above histomb, as a trophy or offering, as the Black Prince's armour isstill in Canterbury Cathedral, and many an odd sword or basinet isstill to be found in old churches. In the case of illustriouspersonages, this armour would be placed on a figure as like thedeceased as possible and set, in an attitude of devotion, near thetomb, in some niche specially prepared.

Such a figure, in full armour, is placed above the gorgeousgrave of the Archduke Ferdinand of the Tyrol, in the InnsbruckPalace Chapel.

The effect of this image, so life-like and so strangelysurviving the centuries, is vivid to the verge of unpleasantness.It has the horror of the waxwork, the pathos of the mummy.

The likeness of the aristocratic face to that of the figure onthe tomb is strong, and between the two, the armed image and thestatue, one receives an instant, keen impression of the personalityof this slight, slim, fair man of the type of Donatello's St.George.

We are far from the brocaded air of Middachten, the manneredelegance of the Middachten Allee, in the gay cafes, the MusisSacrum, the pleasant promenades, the bright, formal gardens,the clean and spacious houses with flowers in the windows of modernArnhem.

* * *

Charles of Egmont, last Duke of Guelders, was descended fromsome of those illustrious families whose very names evokeglittering images of pomp and power. Their arms are upheld by thelions round his tomb—Guelders and Juliers, Cleves and Mark, Arkeland Burgundy, Berry, Bavaria, and Hainault.

Born in 1467, in the darkest hour of his father's misfortunes,Charles was captured in 1473 at Nijmegen by a conqueror ofGuelders, the redoubtable and gloomy Duke of Burgundy, calledCharles the Bold or Headstrong, and taken with his sister Philippato Ghent to be educated. There he was placed under the care of themeek and amiable heiress to all the turbulent conquests of theHouse of Burgundy, Mary, married in 1474 to the "last of theknights," the Archduke Maximilian, son of the Emperor Frederic.

Charles of Burgundy went down to death in the sombre disaster ofNancy three years later, and Mary, whose husband ruled herNetherlandish possessions, continued to protect the deposedorphans; but in a short time the gentle duch*ess was killed by afall from her horse, leaving her ambitious husband free to marryanother woman with a dowry as splendid and as troublesome.

It is said that Mary, on her deathbed, begged her husband toallow her wards to return in freedom to Guelders; but Maximilianhad already an idea of the quality of Charles, and kept him close.His sister evaded Maximilian by her marriage with Rene, Duke ofLorraine.

Charles, however, escaped and put himself under the protectionof Engelbert of Nassau. By 1492 he had succeeded in rousingGuelders, always ripe for revolt against the alien Burgundian rule,and was proclaimed Duke. He was now twenty-five years old,beautiful, elegant and accomplished, full of courage and eagerhopes.

Maximilian's attempts to regain Guelders resulted in a war whichlasted till 1499, when, by the intervention of Louis XII, a trucewas proclaimed.

Philip the Handsome, Maximilian's son, carried on a further warfor the lost Province, during which Charles made himself master ofBrabant. Maximilian now formed a league against the bold Duke,including the Kings of Aragon and England, and Charles wascompelled to do homage to Maximilian, an episode magnificentlyrendered on one of the bas-reliefs on Maximilian's cenotaph atInnsbruck, where the exquisitely aristocratic and knightly figureof the proud Austrian, and the forced submission of the equallyhaughty Egmont are rendered with superb taste and feeling.

Round this empty tomb, so far from Arnhem, watch the monstrousbronze figures, in grotesque armour, of Charles' loathed enemies,the Burgundian conquerors, Philip the Good, Charles the Bold,Philip the Handsome.

The Duke of Guelders, however, was by no means daunted. With theaid of the French he renewed the conflict and successfully resistedtill 1528, when Maximilian's son and successor, Charles V,compelled him to accept the position of a vassal of the Empire.

Charles now schemed to detach Guelders from the Empire and uniteher to France, not such an impossible chimera as a glance at themodern map might seem to prove, but his subjects so resented thescheme that they forced him to abdicate in 1538, leaving hishonours to William, Duke of Cleves, Juliers and Berg, a faithfulvassal of the Emperor.

That year Charles of Egmont, having lost in his old age thebeloved land for which he had fought so fiercely, winning, losing,winning, losing, for half a century, died of chagrin, and was giventhose honours in death which he had just resigned in life.

Such are the bare bones of a tale as vigorous, glowing andpicturesque as any to be found in the annals of those times, whenmen did not fight for a cause, or a faith, or any question of anypolicy, but simply for a crown, towns, so many miles of land; somany armed men to ride behind them, so many castles in which totake their ease.

And now the flowing away of silent time has left Charles ofEgmont stranded in the cool shadows of a Calvinist church with analien city stretching beyond the doors, his florid pomp showingqueerly in the sullen simplicity of the bare aisles, his kneelingimage supplicating the empty air from which his idols have longsince vanished.

* * *

The only other old buildings of any importance in Arnhem are theGemeente huis, completely restored and modernised, and St.Walpurgis (a name so suggestive of fiendish and unearthlygathering), which still belongs to the Roman Catholics andtherefore preserves much of its original character, although this,the oldest church in Arnhem, was from 1583 to 1806 an arsenal andhoused the thunders of earth instead of those of Heaven.

Louis Bonaparte, a just, moderate man, most anxious to do hisbest, returned the town powder magazine to its original use, andSt. Walpurgis, very well restored, is now gorgeous with colouredglass and painting and gilding.

The other building has a deeper interest. The Gemeentehuis was once the Duivelsch huis van Marten van Rossem,the famous lieutenant of Charles of Egmont, called "Devil's House,"either from the ferocious-looking gargoyles which adorn it, or, asseems more likely, since so many edifices of that time had suchornaments, from the disposition of the master.

Van Rossem was a true soldier of the times when rapine, pillage,massacre, burning, and slaying were part of everyday military life,and appears to have been a terror to his enemies and no greatcomfort to his friends. He owned Cannenberg Castle, first built in1372, and there his statue may be seen with a Dutch inscriptiongiving his titles: Heer tot Poederogen endeMeyneswyck—Marschalk van Gelderland, and so on. Aportrait of the grim "Marschalk" and one of his master, DukeCharles of Egmont, may be seen with other corporation treasures andseals in the town museum of Arnhem.

The Duivels huis has been carefully restored to, as faras possible, its ancient form, and now serves the decorous officeof Town Hall or portion of the Town Hall, which end of hisfavourite residence would not have been much to the taste of Martenvan Rossem, one of whose favourite sayings was:

"As the Magnificat is the jewel of the Vespers, so iscarnage the jewel of the campaign."

This fire-eating and breathing warrior lived without fear anddied without repentance, for he came to his end in Antwerp, throughhis favourite vice of gluttony. His death was as hearty as hislife, for the lusty "Marschalk" choked while ravenously devouring apigeon pie, or expired from a fit at this moment; in any case, thiswas the consistent, if undignified finish to his dreadful career,and had at least the merit of candour and a certain vigorous,virile simplicity—a condottiere of the North.

* * *

The Sabel Poort is the one remnant of the walls or gatesof Arnhem left; it has been much restored.

Mention has already been made of the most valuable collection ofProvincial and Municipal archives, charters, account, and fiefbooks, etc., the oldest of which is dated 1076, and with which isincorporated the library from the old Abbey of Bethlehem, mostlycharters still with their seals, of local and expert interest only,but extremely beautiful objects to the sight and touch.

* * *

Outside Arnhem is a queer "Open-Air" Museum, where, in apicturesque park, are gathered examples of Dutch domestic peasantarchitecture, mostly wood, taken from all the Provinces of theNetherlands.

These huts, windmills, waggons, farms, and so on, that lookinevitably like an ogre's toys, are prettily arranged, and of theutmost interest to those attracted by this humble architecture,often so neat and pleasing, and always so suitable to its purpose.This Museum preserves admirably what would otherwise be completelylost, and the idea might, before it is quite too late, be copied inother countries; there is an excellent collection of this kindoutside Stockholm.

* * *

A different type of collection is housed in the stately Castleof Doorwerth on the road to Oosterbeek, where there is now theGuelders Historical Museum and that of the Dutch Artillery.

Doorwerth is one of the most impressive of the numberlesscastles of the Low Countries. It was built in 1260 by Barend vanDoorwerth, and in 1493 was one of the strongholds of Charles ofEgmont. Afterwards it was in the possession of the Bentinck family.Three Dutch Stadtholders, Frederic Henry, William II, William III,visited here, as did the King of Denmark in 1705.

Doorwerth is more like a German than a Dutch castle, and hassomething of the romantic, fantastic air of its fellows farther upthe Rhine. It is placed on a gentle rise above the river andcommands a view of the utmost grace and delicacy; the Rhine windingfrom Prussia down to Rotterdam, the soft woods and airy distances(those azure perspectives beloved by Claude Lorraine), the Betuwe,so fertile and radiant, and Elst, Elden, Tiel, and Nijmegen visiblealong the shining length of the famous river which surely washesthe stones of more fair cities than any other river in theworld.

Guelders was always divided into the Betuwe, or rich, pastureand wooded land, and the Veluwe, or barren, sandy, heathy land. Inspringtime the bloom and blossom in the Betuwe is of a lovelinesssufficient to draw strangers to gaze on the fairy white and rose ofcherry, apple, plum, and pear.

* * *

Very few foreigners ever penetrated to Guelders in the past;these further Provinces were regarded by French and English asalmost savage places, nor was there much trading done with thewarlike Duchy, so foreign influence, anecdote, tale, or memorial isnot found here. Nor, on the other hand, did Guelders produce anygreat men of her own, at least in the arts and sciences. Arnhemder Lustige seems destitute of native talent, and the men ofGuelders had too often "the sword in hand" to be able to wieldanything more peaceful.

Mary of Guelders, however, married James II of Scotland, and thered-haired angel in the valuable altar-piece at Holy-rood Palace ispleasingly supposed to be her likeness. One hopes that thisprecious painting, still of disputed authorship, but obviouslyNetherlandish work, does contain the likeness of the Dutch Queen ofScotland.

James II was killed by the bursting of a cannon ball at thesiege of Roxburgh, and Mary built for her consolation and retreat alittle chapel outside Edinburgh, where perhaps she sat and playedthe "angelic music" of the fifteenth century and looked very muchlike the Dutch angel in the altar-piece so miserably mis-hung inHolyrood. Mary of Guelders' chapel and the lake it stood by wereboth destroyed by the building of Waverley station and therailway.

This is one of the few faint links that connect Guelders withthe rest of Europe. For the rest, the lovely Province, until itbecame the favourite hunting ground of William III, had little todo with the rest of Europe.

Perversely, perhaps, the figure of Charles, Count Egmont, Dukeof Guelders, seems to remain the most vital thing in Arnhem and thesurrounding campaign. One hears his war-cry "Gelre! Gelre!" seesthe red and yellow colours floating above the slim, knightlyfigure, the resolute blond face clearly enough in every glade ofGuelders. The man was the most important his country produced, andhis story would be well worth telling.

This family afterwards produced another gallant and unfortunateknight, Count Lamoral Egmont, who was one of Alva's first twovictims, and Anna van Buren, through whom the possessions of theEgmonts came into ownership of the House of Orange.

Though Charles of Egmont sleeps alone in Anthem choir, and theguide assures you he was unmarried, he wedded in 1518, when he wasalready fifty years old, Elizabeth, daughter of the Duke ofBrunswick Luneberg, by whom he had no children.

His appearance, shortly after his marriage, when he was at oneof the most anxious moments of his fortune, is thus described, andwith this picture of Guelders' greatest son, we may leaveArnhem.

* * *

Charles of Egmont was at Roosendahal, whose fourteen-feet-thickwalls offered stoutprotection against any possible attack. Hisstables were full of stately horses, and he had with him hismenagerie of lions and other odd Eastern beasts, but for his ownsplendour there was little money. When at war, Charles, with thearmour now seen above his tomb, displayed a helmet with a hugepanache of peaco*ck's plumes, like the Teutonic Knights, three tiersof stiff feathers, surely the most pompous decoration that evercrowned mortal brows. In Roosendaal he wore a red cloth hat whereseven gold roses held a sweep of ostrich feathers. Each rosesparkled with a jewel in the heart. Beneath this Charles wore aclose gold-embroidered cap, for, after the mode of the BurgundianCourt, then the most elegant in Europe, the Duke had his hairclose-cropped and his face close-shaved, an effect very noticeablein the statue on his monument and the image that wears hisarmour—indeed, in all early Netherlandish portraits; Maximilian Iand his son, Philip the Handsome, wore long, heavy, square-cuthair, a German fashion.

The rest of the Duke's attire was red velvet jerkin andbreeches, a beautiful grey wolfskin fastened with a jewelled claspover his shoulders, and several gorgeous rings, which servedanother purpose besides adornment, for the emerald was a charmagainst fever, the opal protected him from poison, the sapphirewarded off complaints of the eyes, and a topaz served to strengthenhis memory, for the dauntless Egmont was not without his beliefs intalismans, as indeed who has been? it is an arid character that iswithout some superstition.

Duke Charles was one of the most industrious and careful ofsovereigns; hardly a town or village in Guelders is without somememorial of his loving care for the little State for which hestruggled so valiantly and so vainly.

* * *

At Apeldoorn, that grand and luxurious village which is oldenough to be mentioned in the letters of such shadowy Emperors asOtto III and Lothair III, is situated one of the most celebratedPalaces of Europe, Het Loo, which is, as it were, the very crown ofthis country of palaces and castles and noble mansions.

Originally a jachtslot of no great pretension, it wasbought by William III, Prince of Orange, from one Van Dornick, whohad another hunting seat in Guelders, at Dieren. The Stadtholderhad a particular affection for Het Loo, probably on account of thelovely scenery and the vicinity of the residences of hisfriends.

Het Loo had been destroyed by the Spaniards and was againravaged by the French in 1672; but on the site William III builtthe present formal chateau designed by Jacob Roman and decorated byDaniel Marot. One can see the same taste in Het Loo as inKensington Palace and Hampton Court and Oranjestein, in Diez,Nassau—the attractive combination of austerity and richness, barefaçades, hard angles, plain lines, pseudo-classic Palladian, andwithin, rococo and lavish, florid ornament.

But Het Loo is by far the most imposing of any of these palaces;William III continued to embellish it to the end of his life. Itwas his absences here which caused so much jealousy in England. Athis death, when his disputed possessions were divided between theKing of Prussia and Prince William Friso, Het Loo came to the shareof the Dutch Prince. In 1796 Het Loo was seized by the French, thecontents sold, and it was converted into barracks.

Two of the elephants from the menagerie were sent to Paris. Itmust have been no easy journey in those days.

King Louis Bonaparte, who seems to have always acted withadmirable intent, endeavoured to have the Castle restored as aroyal residence; but his reign was too short to allow him to carryany of his ideas into effect.

On their return to power, the Princes of Orange recovered theirproperty, and it was here that William I, King of the Netherlands,abdicated his crown in his old age, in 1840, to William II, thedashing, handsome hero of Waterloo.

His grandson, King William III of the Netherlands, furtherrestored and embellished Het Loo, laying out the grounds with greatskill and taste and giving to the Palace the present aspect ofcostly beauty.

The gardens are now among the most celebrated in the world, andperhaps it is capricious to regret the old Dutch jardin debroderie, the formal "Court of Honour," all the decorativeprimness of the seventeenth century which distinguished these royalgardens in the days before picturesque landscape gardening wasconceived and only the artificial was admired.

Het Loo is now the favourite residence of her present Majesty,who is not only the heiress of the most ancient and illustrioushouse now reigning in Europe, but the only woman in the world aruling monarch in her own right. Her Majesty's position, hercharacter and achievements give an added lustre to her noble familyand to that womanhood which has accomplished so much in the lastgeneration.

This charming and intelligent lady is regarded by her peoplewith a devotion that amounts to veneration, and it is the prettiestsight in the world to see Her Majesty in one of her magnificent oldcities, surrounded by her applauding subjects, while the famousOrange banners stream from every window and roof-top above thenational flag.

* * *

It is easy to understand why Het Loo has been the favouriteresidence of so many Princes. The vast woods, reaching to Ellspeetand from there as far as the heaths of Milligen, must in earlierdays have been superb hunting grounds, and in later, a deliciousdefence from the noise and commonplace of the world.

The jachtslot of Het Loo was originally in the possessionof the Bentinck family, who did homage for it as a fief, presentingto the Dukes of Guelders a hunting horn and two white hinds everyyear; the hinds were probably bred for the purpose in the menageriethen kept by every nobleman of wealth.

When William III built his magnificent new château in 1672, hemade the old Castle itself into one of these menageries. Thecollection of fantastic-looking beasts he kept there was paintedoften by Melchior Hondecoeter. One such picture, now in theMauritshuis, once served as an overmantel decoration in Het Loo,and gives a charming idea of the elegance and oddness of thesestately seventeenth-century menageries.

At Het Loo, too, this King had most of his famous gallery ofpictures, which, though afterwards dispersed, formed the nucleus ofthis same collection at The Hague.

In the reign of William III Het Loo must have been, on a smallerscale, as sumptuous as Versailles and in a good deal better tasteand order. The Earl of Portland wrote to William from Paris thatKing Louis's vaunted flower-beds were "very ill-kept"; ill-kept, nodoubt, they were compared to the beautiful exactitude and solidrichness of those of Het Loo, that made the French flourishes seema little tawdry.

* * *

Zutphen is associated in an English mind with Sir Philip Sidney,and is hence far better known to us than many a more importantDutch town. It lies close to the Overijssel frontier and was oncethe chief city of the County of Zutphen, a title of the Dukes ofGuelders and even borne by Charles V.

Sir Philip Sidney was killed at Warnveld while besiegingZutphen, then in possession of the Spaniards, some little wayoutside the town, where a pleasant statue has been gracefullyraised to his memory.

Zutphen is finely situated at the juncture of the Yssel andBerkel, and has an important air, though now it can boast nothingof its ancient grandeurs, Zutphen de Rykste, save aconsiderable timber trade.

Zutphen was taken without resistance by the Spanish in 1572. Thesame dreary, bloody tale belongs to most of these fine old towns;Spanish and French in turn wreaking the vengeance of pride and envyon an inoffensive, valiant, and laborious people.

In this case the wretched town was almost depopulated. Leicestertried in vain to re-take it, but was rudely defeated by the Duke ofParma.

Maurice of Orange finally took the town in 1591. A hundred yearsafter the entry of the Spaniards Zutphen was seized by theFrench.

Zutphen, the Province, was united to Guelders by the marriage ofSophia, Countess of Zutphen, with Otto of Nassau, Count ofGuelders, and Zutphen has still the atmosphere of an old courtlycity, not a provincial town. It appears gay and well off and tohave recovered from horrors of wars and wearinesses of longneglect.

Here are the stiff, elegant houses of the better sort (Ysselkade), the trim gardens, the public walks, the comfortable shopsand cafés, common to all Dutch towns, but there are also theantique moat and walls, the river Berkel washing the old ramparts,a medley of old houses with queer gables and faded colours, and thelong tresses of bright trees trailing in the water, while a riot offlowers cascades from the upper windows—all this more likeNuremberg than any other town in the Low Countries.

* * *

The Groote Kerk of Zutphen was also, like that of Arnhem, oncededicated to the Saint on whose festival the witches used to meetthe Devil on the Brocken—St. Walpurgis, which is very old (twelfthcentury), and in consequence very much restored after being verymuch neglected.

This grand and rather melancholy church once enjoyed great fameas the shrine of the relics of St. Justus, an obscure young Romansaint, who appears, after all, to have been buried in Beauvais.

The present treasures are a delicate and lovely candela-bruinpresented by Otto II of Nassau, Count of Guelders, in thethirteenth century, of gilded iron in the likeness of an ImperialCrown, and a superb copper font cast in 1527.

There is also the curious, unique but dark, musty and sadlibrary of the church, still hoarded in the original room, withdesks and chained folios, very learned, rare, and imposing, albeita little tattered, dusty and meaningless, and piteously out ofplace as an adjunct to the worthy Calvinist meetinghouse that thesinister-named St. Walpurgis now is.

* * *

The rich and amiable little old city has a few more noteworthybuildings pressed in among her well-kept, ancient, pretty houses,including the solid, heavy but pleasing Weigh House of 1618, withthe belfry whose bells were spared by Louvois in 1672, which wasonce the "Wynhuis" or Custom House for the duties on Rhenishwines.

There is a respectable library now housed there and a veryvaluable collection of archives, letters, and documents signed byfamous worthies.

One of the old ramparts, the Ruime, remains, stillfrowning above the Yssel and the Drogenapstoren. A turreted GothicGate rises majestically above the trees, belfries, and sloping redroofs, and looks over the blond fields, so fruitful and golden,that roll to the very banks of the water, gay with thevivid-painted tjalks that so comfortably indicate peace andprosperity.

* * *

Roermond was once a town of old Guelders, but has since beenunited to Limburg, to which Province and Flemish Catholicism itseems more naturally to belong. There remain in Guelders, of theseold cities, then, imperial Nijmegen, Tiel, and Zalt Bommel on theRhine, Loevenstein, the gloomy prison fortress, and Elberg, theonce fortified port, besides numberless châteaux, mansions, andvillages of charm and interest which only the very leisurelytraveller and writer will have opportunity to indulge themselveswith.

Tiel has lost nearly all its importance and contains but fewrelics of the mighty past when it received its charter from Otto I(972). Tiel resisted the Spaniards, but was taken by Turenne in theramp jaar. One remnant of the fortifications is theKleiberg Gate.

Zalt Bommel was also twice unsuccessfully besieged by theSpaniards, but fell to Turenne after a fierce defence. It issituated on the Rhine at the point where the river ceases to betidal.

The two sieges of Zalt Bommel, 1574-1599, form each an epicstory of heroism and endurance. It was such triumphant resistancesas those of Zalt Bommel which turned the tide in favour of theDutch and caused Alva to withdraw his bloody forces in despair.

The St. Maarten's Kerk of Zalt Bommel has a dignified and loftytower which rises with noble effect above the medley of ancienthouses, the ramparts laid out with gracious avenues of trees andthe stretch of river widening to the sea.

This Collegiate Church (fifteenth century) has, as usual, beenburnt down and built up again, and converted at last, peacefullyand happily, if dourly and a little grimly, into the chapel of apruned or lopped faith. There are still some ancient wall-paintingsleft, and greatly as such relics are admired and cherished, thereseems so little meaning or beauty in them that a glimpse of thecrude daubs usually disfiguring church walls in pre-Reformationdays makes one more favourably inclined to Luther andwhitewash.

The tower, like that of the Groote Kerk of Zutphen, has beenstruck and consumed by lightning. These visitations of hemelsvuur seem to have been regarded with no superstitious awe; atZutphen these disasters are calmly commemorated by tablets with themagistrate's name attached. The pedants of the day loved also towrite chronograms and pious rhymes on such events, which, when in amixture of dog Latin and Dutch, have a very alluring flavour.

The following, which has a ripe, robust sound indeed, wasinscribed on a bell hung in the tower of St. Maartens, after thefire of 1538:

"Anno vijftien hondert acht en dertig om
Donderde de Toren van Bommel om,
Actum factum donder om!
Heer der Heeren, nooit weer om!"

John Evelyn, in his journey of 1641, found an English garrisonat Bommel, which he called a "pretty town," after he had takenfarewell of Goring's "Leaguer and Camerades" at Gennap.

Leicester was also at Bommel, where he left a Dutch garrison.Bommel is also mentioned as one of the earliest towns engaged inthe trade with England—in the reign of Edward I, the others beingDeventer, Kampen, Zutphen, Muiden, and Zwolle.

The Netherlands were united to England not only by the frequentintermarriages of the Dutch Princes with the Royal House ofEngland, but by this constant stream of trade flowing to and fro,and later, by the various settlements of Dutch refugees in Englandand English refugees in the Netherlands.

Several Dutch towns belonged to the Hansa, and certainly anumber of the "Almaines" or "Easterlings," who had their Englishquarters in the London Steel Yard, must have been Dutch, as theywould now be called, i.e., Hollanders, Zealanders, Brabanters,Frieslanders, and men from Utrecht and Guelders.

* * *

Culembourg, once the seat of the Counts of that name, is anotherancient Guelders town on the Lower Rhine, now reduced to peacefulinsignificance. In 144 Roelof VII of Beusichem gave CulembourgCounty to his son Huibert, who built here a fine castle, rebuilt in1350 and now utterly disappeared.

Culembourg boasts, however, a delightful Stadhuis, builtin 1534 as a residence for Anthony van Lalaing, Count Hoogstraten,and his wife, Elizabeth van Culembourg. It is a mannered, elegantbuilding, step gabled, of brick with bulbous-topped tower anddouble-winged step, adorned by lions, the arms of Culembourg, and,formerly, by statues, which have disappeared.

This steep, tall and narrow building, so precise, formal andexact, yet so ornate and decorative, is as typical a piece ofarchitecture as is to be found in the country.

* * *

Buren, the inheritance of the Egmonts, and through the firstwife of William I of Orange the possession of the House of Orange(Count of Buren being one of the many titles of these Princes), isremarkable for an Orphanage endowed by Mary, Countess of Hohenloe,born Princess of Orange and Countess of Nassau, who died in1613.

This tasteful building, in old Dutch style, with delicate belfryand charming brick-and-stone gate, is a delightful memorial of theconnection between the House of Orange and Guelders, and of one ofthose admirable women whose kindness and culture make pleasantrelief in dark and wretched times.

Like the sound of a soft feminine voice among all the noise andtumult of the time is the inscription on this Westhuis,where the dead Princess seems to plead for living children withtender piety.

* * *

Loevenstein, a proud and gloomy castle above Gorkum, almost onthe borders of North Holland, has a history more important thanthat of most Guelders ruins; for here was imprisoned Hugo de Groot,one of the greatest of Dutchmen, and from here he made his famousescape, helped by a brave and loyal wife, in a case of books.

Loevenstein, for long a State prison, housed many enemies of theHouse of Orange and prisoners of the States-General.

Here was confined Jacob de Witt, Burgomaster of Dordt and fatherof John and Cornelius—the bitter drop of personal enmity betweenthe De Witts and the House of Orange was, no doubt, caused by thisimprisonment.

Here, too, was imprisoned Sir George Ascue, captured at thevictory of the Dutch on June 4th, 1665, when the Prince andnine other men-of-war and two thousand prisoners were seized by thevictors. Sir George, after being "carried up and down The Hague,for people to see," was confined in Loevenstein and afterwardsransomed for eleven hundred florins.

Sir William Berkeley, another Englishman, was killed in thissame battle, and his embalmed body lay in a sugar-chest in a chapelof the Groote Kerk at The Hague, "his flag standing up by him."

The corpse was afterwards sent back to England. There was nocomplaint of the behaviour of the Dutch Government on thisoccasion, though Pepys says of the populace: "It seems the Dutch doinsult mightily of their victory and they have great reason."

One thinks they had indeed. The sympathy of every just-mindedperson must be on the side of this patient, brave and inoffensivepeople, who had so well won and well used their liberty andprosperity, and were then so wantonly fallen upon by jealous,grasping, and arrogant neighbours.

Pepys is often full of admiration for the behaviour of the Dutchin this war, as when he records their generous treatment of theirprisoners and adds: "which is done like a noble, brave and wisepeople."

The English were inclined to blame the Dutch for the "hellishcontrivance" of the Great Fire, 1666, and it is amusing to glanceat the other side of the picture, and see that the Dutch rejoicedin this same disaster as a Divine Retribution for the destructionof Vlieland and Terschelling by the English in that year, when amillion pounds' worth of damage was done, and houses and villagesburnt "as bonfires for the success at sea."

To Loevenstein also came in 1675 Abraham de Wicquefort, to live,as he complained, "in a frightful solitude and only the company ofthe family of the gaoler, rats, owls, and bats."

De Wicquefort was an able but dubious personage, accused, withgood reason, of double dealing with the States-General. He had beena French and then a Dutch spy and, being by birth a Fleming, wasprobably not true to either side.

He accused the young Stadtholder of being the author of hisdownfall; for not only had he been a close friend of John de Witt,but had written rather too boldly of William in his officialHistory of the United Provinces.

This curious work has been the foundation for many subsequenthistories of the Low Countries, but De Wicquefort, as so manyhistorians of their own times are, was prejudiced and hasty, andhis statements need testing.

Evidently he was not kept very closely in his frightful prison,for he contrived to escape after four years, and fled to Zell inBrunswick, where he continued his history, with, one may be sure,even more prejudice than before against the Prince of Orange andwith long-winded "passion, pains, and prolixity."

De Wicquefort possessed both wit and learning. It was he whosaid, about the delays anent the bringing of William II's bride byher mother, that it depended on three of the most uncertain thingsin the world—the wind, a woman, and the Parliament of England.

Through the Resident of the Duke of Luxembourg Wicquefort seemsto have been trusted with the translating of the English lettersreceived by the States and the Prince of Orange. A certain secretcorrespondence of the latter with Lord Howard came intoWicquefort's hands and he sold it to Sir Joseph Williamson, theEnglish Minister, in 1675. Lord Howard was put in the Tower, andsaved only by the Dutch threat to execute Wicquefort if he wastouched, a menace, which, curiously, had effect.

Wicquefort was "clapt up," as the saying went, on his refusal toproduce the originals of the papers entrusted to him. He mentionsbitterly that the Prince of Orange watched him led off withsatisfaction, for which the young Stadtholder need not be blamed.Despite his complaints, De Wicquefort seems to have been welltreated in Loevenstein.

* * *

Lerdam and Arkel are delicious old-world towns, the former withan entrancing ancient harbour, and Elberg, on the Zuyder Zee, is afine example of a fortified haven, once of considerable importanceand renown and still of vast interest, as examples of fortifiedharbours dating from the Middle Ages are rare enough.

One of the four watchful gates remains and is in the highestdegree picturesque and romantic. Some of the sturdy walls stillstand, and are now adorned with coquettish summer-houses andgraceful clusters of trees.

The view from Elberg is lovely, both over sea and land; thefruitful lush meadows, that seem to run down to the very waves,roll into the sullen, sterile heaths of Guelders and the moorlandsthat border the Yssel, or into the deep groves of the fair woods ofPutten.

* * *

Nijmegen is the most venerable city in Guelders, indeed in theNetherlands, but seems a little outside the history of both. It wasCharlemagne's second city, coming next to Aix-la-Chapelle, theimperial capital of the Lower Rhine.

It is very different in appearance from the flat cities of theplains and swamps, for it rises grandly from the left bank of thebroad Waal and is nobly crowned by the towering church.

The town is indeed built on a slight hill, one of anamphitheatre of seven, which seems considerable after the flats ofHolland, and the roofs rise one above the other to the summit,where are the market-place and church.

The views from Nijmegen, though marred by the inevitable railwaybridge, are superb, excelling those in the environs of Arnhem andCleves. From the Belvedere can be seen one of the most historic andimposing landscapes in North Europe—four famous rivers, the Waal,Maas, Rhine and Yssel, watering that rich district known as Betuwe(the original "Batavia" of the Romans), and in the distance Arnhemand Cleves, together with eight other towns and fifty villages.

The history of Nijmegen belongs to that of the Empire of theCarlovingians; it has little to do with the Netherlands as they areto-day. Here is no neat, solid, Republican town, but a rathermelancholy, regal and gloomy city that seems asleep in a dream ofruined pride. Not the most flourishing suburbs, the most efficientof railway stations, the most well-kept of spacious parks canefface this effect.

Nijmegen became afterwards a free imperial town and a member ofthe Hansa League. In 1579 she became a member of the Union ofUtrecht, and so lost her personal history, but not her powerful,sombre individuality.

Nijmegen fell to the Spaniards in 1585, was re-taken by Mauriceof Orange in 1591; Turenne occupied the town in 1672 and held ittill 1678, when the Peace signed within these walls returned theold imperial city to the young Republic.

It is by this Peace that Nijmegen is best known in the historybooks. Sir William Temple, the English delegate, has left anamusing picture of his being ferried across the Waal in a coach andsix, when the salvos fired by the town in his honour so frightenedthe horses that they stampeded and nearly cast the grave Ambassadorand his suite into the river. "However," says Sir William, "by theaid of my servants we safely reached the other side."

It is not, however, of Nijmegen as a peaceful, stately Dutchtown, a worthy member of the United Provinces, with burgomaster andcitizens, that one thinks, though this is what the venerable cityhas been for a good number of years now, but rather of thosefar-off royal days, the atmosphere of which so powerfullyremains.

On the top of the hill on which the town is built rises not onlythe massive church, but the Stadhuis and the old GrammarSchool, indeed the centre of the life of the town.

Despite big modern shops, bustle and hurry, this part ofNijmegen still retains a peculiar air, which, on turning into thechurch enclosure, becomes all-prevailing. It is a melancholy,musty, decayed air, the flavour of something so old as to be nearlymeaningless.

This church, dedicated to St. Stephen, is not attractively setabout with neat tiny houses, comely trees and an open square, as inmost Dutch towns, but is huddled away behind other buildings,closed in, stifled, and has a penetrating air of neglect andoblivion. It is by the low, dark arches at the bottom of one of thegabled houses of the Groot Markt that we enter the pent-incourtyard of the church with which time has not dealt too gently,for damp and wind have crumbled the soft stone of which it wasbuilt, and great holes in the walls have been filled up withbrick.

The original church was built on, it is said, an early Christiancemetery, by the Dutch Kaiser William II, Count of Holland, anddedicated to St., Stephen and the Virgin by Albert, Bishop ofRatisbon, September 7th, 1273. It is doubtful if Kaiser Williampaid for the stately building since, like most potentates of histime, he was continually in want of money, and pledged Nijmegenitself for twenty-one thousand silver marks.

Very little is left of this early edifice; the church as we seeit now is late fifteenth century, very impressive and fine, withthe massive aisles and pentagon chapels and clustered pillars, butsomehow sombre and sad to a degree, and with an odd air of neglectunusual in Dutch churches and certainly more fanciful than real.There are a few old bas-reliefs, much damaged, some latewainscoting, and one sombre treasure, the dark and lonely tomb ofLord Philip de Comines, "Young Madam of Guelderland," Catherine deBourbon, wife of the deposed Duke Adolf and mother of CharlesEgmont, last Duke of Guelders.

It was at the Court of her brother-in-law, Charles the Bold,that she met Adolf Egmont, and she was married to him in 1463 atBruges. Her short life was disturbed and unhappy; her husband wasexcommunicated by the Pope, put under the ban of the Empire, andfallen upon by Charles the Bold and the Duke of Cleves.

Catherine de Bourbon left the pleasant shelter of the BurgundianCourt, where she was greatly loved, and joined the stormy fortunesof her cursed and menaced husband. She died soon after in 1469, atNijmegen, no doubt of fatigue and distress, as many women must havedied in those fierce and terrible times.

Catherine's unhappy lord, Duke Adolf, was scarcely deserving ofthis tender loyalty; it is of him De Comines describes that fearfulpicture of youth bustling age off the world's stage.

He seized his father, Duke Arnald, one night as he was going tobed, and dragged him six Dutch miles in his shirt "on a marvellouscold night," and thrust him into the usual airless dungeon. It wasthis behaviour that caused the Pope, the Emperor, the Duke ofCleves (the old man's brother-in-law) to make war on Adolf.

The Duke of Burgundy tried to act as peacemaker and forciblytook Duke Arnald out of prison.

"I have often seen them," writes De Comines, "together in theDuke of Burgundy's chamber pleading their cause...and once I sawthe old man offer combat to his son."

A dreadful scene.

Charles the Bold favoured the young man who was, no doubt, afterhis own type, and offered him all Guelders with the exception ofGrave, and a revenue of three thousand florins to be left to hisfather, who was to be called Duke, while the young Adolf should beentitled Governor of Guelders.

De Comines had to take these terms to Adolf, who instantlyreplied "that he would rather throw his father headlong into a wellthan agree to such conditions," adding that his father had reignedforty-four years and it was now his turn.

Charles of Burgundy finally put this fierce spirit underrestraint, but Adolf escaped in disguise to his own country, yetbetrayed himself at Namur, where he offered a guilder for theferry. He was recaptured and held a prisoner at Namur, where heremained till the death of the Duke of Burgundy in 1477, when, setfree by the men of Ghent, he, "being weakly accompanied, wasmiserably slain in a skirmish before Tournay."

The spirit of the warlike Guelders people appears to have beenon the side of Adolf in this dismal quarrel, particularly that ofthe citizens of Nijmegen, who were reputed to be never happy "savewhen they had swords in their hands." When made prisoner the oldDuke begged, with tears in his eyes, not to be taken toNijmegen.

The gentle Catherine de Bourbon had long been in her grave whenher turbulent lord was released, and bitterly he must haveregretted her, for it is certain that she had truly loved himdespite his misfortune and his crimes.

These sweet and patient, soft and fragile women, of whom historytakes so little account, did generally love and adore their sternand fierce husbands, as was but natural, the true woman forming theperfect mate for the true man.

As the men were born and bred, trained and formed for power,war, domination, and arrogance, so the women were born and bred,trained and formed for meekness, obedience, timidity, andgentleness.

There is still something in the highest degree romantic andlovely in the mating of these opposite qualities, the love of thesoft, helpless woman for the bold, masterful man; something we havelost, or nearly lost to-day, finding other things in its place, nodoubt, but definitely lost, with the equality and merging of thesexes.

The type of the medieval knight, ruthless, virile, cruel,splendid, has gone—fortunately it may be, inevitably it mustbe—yet it is easy to understand the devotion they inspired intheir gentle wives and the real passion that must have existedbetween men who were completely men and women who were completelywomen.

The tomb of poor Catherine de Bourbon is of black marble, setwith copper plates on which are engraved saints and the arms ofEgmont, Valois, and Bourbon. On the top is the likeness of the"Young Madam of Guelderland" herself.

The whole air of the tomb is even more lonely and gloomy thanthat of her son in Arnhem, a dreary bit of wreckage from the pastindeed.

On opening the tomb some fifty years or more ago it was foundthat the body of the princess had been huddled away in a corner,while her former place was occupied, curiously enough, by a Duke ofSaxony lying in State robes in a pompous coffin. The bitter luck ofthe Egmonts seemed to pursue them and theirs after death.

The author of the tomb was Master Leomans of Cologne.

* * *

The Stadhuis of Nijmegen is unusual and august inappearance, though simple; the date is 1554, when the free imperialcity was a member of the Hansa and commercially veryprosperous.

It is adorned by statues of Emperors (the present ones arecopies of the original), these being different indeed from theusual personages on Dutch Town Halls.

The vestibule, once the Courts of Justice, is beautiful, withraised seats carved by Gerard van Dulcken (1555) and three superbdoors and a most majestic, wonderful clock. In this building ishoused the municipal collection of antiquities and several gloriousdrinking-cups, tapestries, and pictures; those of local interestincluding portraits of the dull-looking personages who signed thePeace of Nijmegen, 1678, an odd painting called "The Riddle ofNijmegen," and, best of all, a view of the old Valkhof by John vanGoyen or one of his pupils.

Here also are many prehistoric Roman and Teutonic remains foundin the neighbourhood of Nijmegen, those broken relics of the pastthat somehow mean so little, and in their broken decay help us notat all to visualise the pompous ages from which they come.

Two allegorical paintings by obscure artists, Rutger vanLangevelt and Stevens Palamady, are curious as commemorating theold dues which Nijmegen had to pay to the Empire—a glove full ofpepper, or pair of deerskin gloves and a pound of pepper, as somesay, to be forwarded every year to Aix-la-Chapelle.

A huge press, with a lock of almost magic complication, held theprecious charters of Nijmegen, many of which are still inexistence, though of little meaning now.

These include charters from Henry VII, 1250, Richard, 1257,Rudolf, 1282, and many potentates who delighted in enriching andprotecting Nijmegen.

The Grammar School (1544) and the Weigh House and Flesher's Hall(1612), the last probably by De Keyser, are notable buildings, asis the house called still after Martin van Rossem, where thatterrible worthy is supposed to have at one time resided.

The whole of the Groot Markt is charming in effect, and there isno lack of curious old houses, doorways, and angles, nooks and oddviews among the medley of houses which lead up from the Waal to themelancholy darkness of St. Stephen's.

* * *

In the amiable and luxurious pleasure grounds of the Valkhof,laid out on one of the hills above the Waal, the main excitement ofa visit to Nijmegen centres.

These grim gardens were once the site of the Imperial Castle ofNijmegen, the Valkhof (from Valkenberg, falconry, or fromWallhof, Castle on the Wall), which was older than the town,for a fort stood on this commanding position before a city wasadded to the citadel, and this was in the dim, traditional ages,for a vague Celt, or Gaul, or Teuton, called Baton, is supposed tohave walled and restored the fort in pre-Roman days.

The Romans called it "Noviomagus," calling the town "Batavorumoppidum," and here we come out of the mists of legend intowell-attested fact; for here Julius Civilius, the rebel Roman,watched his troops defeated on the shining plains below by theorderly legions of Rome, whose glittering eagles bore down thelusty Batavians.

The exact spot is supposed to have been the Watch-tower, orBelvedere, a fragment of the old walls from which a glorious view,looking much as it must have looked in the time of the discomfitedJulius, can still be enjoyed, though the tower itself only datesfrom 1646.

This most impressive view embraces Limburg, North Brabant andGuelders, and a distant panorama stretching as far as Cleves.

The Castle, once so famous, so gorgeous and so splendid, hasentirely disappeared save for two small and rather pitifulfragments.

In 1799 the superb old imperial building was utterly demolishedand public promenades laid out.

Charlemagne either built or rebuilt a castle on the old Romanfoundations here in 777, and it became the seat of the Court andthe centre of the Empire under subsequent Carlovingian, Saxon,Frankish, and Hohenstaufen Emperors.

Theopano, Empress of Otto II, died here in 991, Henry III, andGunhilda of Denmark were married here in 1036, in 1165 Henry VI,son of Barbarossa and father of Frederic II, was born here.Charlemagne, his son Louis, Charles the Bold, Otto I, Conrad III,Sigismund and Albert, all held their Imperial Court here, andlater, two more famous Csars, Maximilian I and his grandson,Charles V, lodged here, as did Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy,Charles of Egmont, Duke of Guelders, and Philip II, King ofSpain.

Some of the most ornate and pompous scenes, some of the mostimposing displays of gold and purple, might and pride, glitter andarrogance known to European history must have taken place withinthe walls of the Valkhof where these Christian Caesars held theirCourt with as much worldly parade as ever did their pagannamesakes.

The two remains of all this magnificence do not mean very much.The largest is a sixteen-sided chapel about which antiquaries donot yet appear to be agreed. It is supposed to be contemporary withCharlemagne and then to have been rebuilt as late as the thirteenthcentury, others have put it back to pre-Roman times and call it aTemple of Thor, or again, a Temple of Janus, while other opinionsascribe it to the ninth or tenth century.

It is certainly too small to have been the Imperial Chapel ofthe Castle, but may have been the Baptistery thereof. This queerlittle building, with double-vaulted galleries and carved arches,is, at any rate, the oldest religious building in the Netherlands,and was certainly some part of the old Imperial Palace. It isunlikely it is older than the Carlovingian period, and it certainlyhas been, if not rebuilt, touched up and partially restored.

The other fragment is more impressive. It is a hemicircle with ademi-cupola pierced by tall, elegant windows and flanked by finewhite marble columns. There is less dispute about the date of this;it is given to the time of Frederic Barbarossa, and is supposed tobe the recess in which stood the massive throne of that mightyKing.

* * *

Berg en Daal (mountain and valley) and Beek, about three milesoutside Nijmegen, contain some of the loveliest spots in theNetherlands, and command some of the most entrancing views alongthe Rhine.

* * *

The pearly, dusky, dewy, delicious roses of Guelders are justlyfamous; but though the viburnum grows in luscious profusion in thisProvince, an explanation was sought in vain as to why it was called"Guelder Rose" in English. Should the word be "guilder"? In eithercase it is a teasing little puzzle, as these pretty names offlowers so often are; but in one person's mind at least the purewhite balls of blossom that hang so richly among the faint-colouredleaves will always, and senselessly, be associated with gallantGuelders.

* * *

A touching story tells of the great bell of Nijmegen, which wascalled "Charlemagne's prayer," and rang hoarsely at curfew. Aburgomaster stopped the noisy old bell, but was forced to restorethe "prayer" to the city, so greatly did the people still cherishthe memory of Kaiser Karl.

"The ground on which all government stands isthe consent of the people, or greatest and strongest part ofthem." —Sir William Temple.

THE END

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