and consumed many
days in anxious deliberation upon the manner in which they should be
expended so as most to redound to the honour of Ernest and the reputation
of the country.

In place of the "bloody tragedies of burning, murdering, and ravishing,"
of which the provinces had so long been the theatre, it was resolved
that, "Rhetoric's sweet comedies, amorous jests, and farces," should
gladden all eyes and hearts. A stately procession of knights and burghers
in historical and mythological costumes, followed by ships, dromedaries,
elephants, whales, giants, dragons, and other wonders of the sea and
shore, escorted the archduke into the city. Every street and square was
filled with triumphal arches, statues and platforms, on which the most
ingenious and thoroughly classical living pictures were exhibited. There
was hardly an eminent deity of Olympus, or hero of ancient history, that
was not revived and made visible to mortal eyes in the person of Ernestus
of Austria.

On a framework fifty-five feet high and thirty-three feet in breadth he
was represented as Apollo hurling his darts at an enormous Python, under
one of whose fore-paws struggled an unfortunate burgher, while the other
clutched a whole city; Tellus, meantime, with her tower on her head,
kneeling anxious and imploring at the feet of her deliverer. On another
stage Ernest assumed the shape of Perseus; Belgica that of the bound and
despairing Andromeda. On a third, the interior of Etna was revealed, when
Vulcan was seen urging his Cyclops to forge for Ernest their most
tremendous thunderbolts with which to smite the foes of the provinces,
those enemies being of course the English and the Hollanders. Venus, the
while, timidly presented an arrow to her husband, which he was requested
to sharpen, in order that when the wars were over Cupid, therewith might
pierce the heart of some beautiful virgin, whose charms should reward
Ernest--fortunately for the female world, still a bachelor--for his
victories and his toils.

The walls of every house were hung with classic emblems and inscribed
with Latin verses. All the pedagogues of Brussels and Antwerp had been at
work for months, determined to amaze the world with their dithyrambics
and acrostics, and they had outdone themselves.

Moreover, in addition to all these theatrical spectacles and pompous
processions--accompanied as they were by blazing tar-barrels, flying
dragons, and leagues of flaring torches--John Bapt