hich every talented author
exercises more or less upon his readers. But to effect this the work of
a few years must have become the labor of a life. My aim in making this
attempt will be more than attained if it should convince a portion of
the reading public of the possibility of writing a history with historic
truth without making a trial of patience to the reader; and if it should
extort from another portion the confession that history can borrow from
a cognate art without thereby, of necessity, becoming a romance.

WEIMAR, Michaelmas Fair, 1788.

INTRODUCTION.

Of those important political events which make the sixteenth century to
take rank among the brightest of the world's epochs, the foundation of
the freedom of the Netherlands appears to me one of the most remarkable.
If the glittering exploits of ambition and the pernicious lust of power
claim our admiration, how much more so should an event in which
oppressed humanity struggled for its noblest rights, where with the good
cause unwonted powers were united, and the resources of resolute despair
triumphed in unequal contest over the terrible arts of tyranny.

Great and encouraging is the reflection that there is a resource left us
against the arrogant usurpations of despotic power; that its
best-contrived plans against the liberty of mankind may be frustrated;
that resolute opposition can weaken even the outstretched arm of tyranny;
and that heroic perseverance can eventually exhaust its fearful
resources. Never did this truth affect me so sensibly as in tracing the
history of that memorable rebellion which forever severed the United
Netherlands from the Spanish Crown. Therefore I thought it not unworth
the while to attempt to exhibit to the world this grand memorial of
social union, in the hope that it may awaken in the breast of my reader a
spirit-stirring consciousness of his own powers, and give a new and
irrefragible example of what in a good cause men may both dare and
venture, and what by union they may accomplish. It is not the
extraordinary or heroic features of this event that induce me to describe
it. The annals of the world record perhaps many similar enterprises,
which may have been even bolder in the conception and more brilliant in
the execution. Some states have fallen after a nobler struggle; others
have risen with more exalted strides. Nor are we here to look for eminent
heroes, colossal talents, or those marvellous exploits which the