arvellous. For the Dutch army, composed of men who had been born in
various climates, and had served under various standards, presented an
aspect at once grotesque, gorgeous, and terrible to islanders who had,
in general, a very indistinct notion of foreign countries. First rode
Macclesfield at the head of two hundred gentlemen, mostly of English
blood, glittering in helmets and cuirasses, and mounted on Flemish war
horses. Each was attended by a negro, brought from the sugar plantations
on the coast of Guiana. The citizens of Exeter, who had never seen so
many specimens of the African race, gazed with wonder on those black
faces set off by embroidered turbans and white feathers. Then with drawn
broad swords came a squadron of Swedish horsemen in black armour and fur
cloaks. They were regarded with a strange interest; for it was rumoured
that they were natives of a land where the ocean was frozen and where
the night lasted through half the year, and that they had themselves
slain the huge bears whose skins they wore. Next, surrounded by a goodly
company of gentlemen and pages, was borne aloft the Prince's banner. On
its broad folds the crowd which covered the roofs and filled the windows
read with delight that memorable inscription, "The Protestant religion
and the liberties of England." But the acclamations redoubled when,
attended by forty running footmen, the Prince himself appeared, armed on
back and breast, wearing a white plume and mounted on a white charger.
With how martial an air he curbed his horse, how thoughtful and
commanding was the expression of his ample forehead and falcon eye,
may still be seen on the canvass of Kneller. Once those grave features
relaxed into a smile. It was when an ancient woman, perhaps one of
the zealous Puritans who through twenty-eight years of persecution had
waited with firm faith for the consolation of Israel, perhaps the mother
of some rebel who had perished in the carnage of Sedgemoor, or in the
more fearful carnage of the Bloody Circuit, broke from the crowd, rushed
through the drawn swords and curvetting horses, touched the hand of the
deliverer, and cried out that now she was happy. Near to the Prince was
one who divided with him the gaze of the multitude. That, men said, was
the great Count Schomberg, the first soldier in Europe, since Turenne
and Conde were gone, the man whose genius and valour had saved the
Portuguese monarchy on the field of Montes Claros, the man who had