hs of the world's history, by an absence of such objectionable
qualities.

It must be confessed, however, that if the world had waited for
heroes--during the dreary period which followed the expulsion of
something that was called Henry III. of France from the gates of his
capital, and especially during the time that followed hard upon the
decease of that embodiment of royalty--its axis must have ceased to turn
for a long succession of years. The Bearnese was at least alive, and a
man. He played his part with consummate audacity and skill; but alas for
an epoch or a country in which such a shape--notwithstanding all its
engaging and even commanding qualities--looked upon as an incarnation of
human greatness!

But the chief mover of all things--so far as one man can be prime
mover--was still the diligent scribe who lived in the Escorial. It was he
whose high mission it was to blow the bellows of civil war, and to
scatter curses over what had once been the smiling abodes of human
creatures, throughout the leading countries of Christendom. The throne of
France was vacant, nominally as well as actually, since--the year 1589.
During two-and-twenty years preceding that epoch he had scourged the
provinces, once constituting the richest and most enlightened portions of
his hereditary domains, upon the theory that without the Spanish
Inquisition no material prosperity was possible on earth, nor any
entrance permitted to the realms of bliss beyond the grave. Had every
Netherlander consented to burn his Bible, and to be burned himself should
he be found listening to its holy precepts if read to him in shop,
cottage, farm-house, or castle; and had he furthermore consented to
renounce all the liberal institutions which his ancestors had earned, in
the struggle of centuries, by the sweat of their brows and the blood of,
their hearts; his benignant proprietor and master, who lived at the ends
of the earth, would have consented at almost any moment to peace. His
arms were ever open. Let it not be supposed that this is the language of
sarcasm or epigram. Stripped of the decorous sophistication by which
human beings are so fond of concealing their naked thoughts from each
other, this was the one simple dogma always propounded by Philip. Grimace
had done its worst, however, and it was long since it had exercised any
power in the Netherlands. The king and the Dutchmen understood each
other; and the plain truths with which those republicans