consisted of a brief note and a long discourse. The note was sharp and
stinging, the discourse elaborate and somewhat pedantic. Unnecessarily
historical and unmercifully extended, it was yet bold, bitter, and
eloquent: The presence of foreigners was proved to have been, from the
beginning of Philip's reign, the curse of the country. Doctor Sonnius,
with his batch of bishops, had sowed the seed of the first disorder. A
prince, ruling in the Netherlands, had no right to turn a deaf ear to the
petitions of his subjects. If he did so, the Hollanders would tell him,
as the old woman had told the Emperor Adrian, that the potentate who had
no time to attend to the interests of his subjects, had not leisure
enough to be a sovereign. While Holland refused to bow its neck to the
Inquisition, the King of Spain dreaded the thunder and lightning of the
Pope. The Hollanders would, with pleasure, emancipate Philip from his own
thraldom, but it was absurd that he, who was himself a slave to another
potentate, should affect unlimited control over a free people. It was
Philip's councillors, not the Hollanders, who were his real enemies; for
it was they who held him in the subjection by which his power was
neutralized and his crown degraded.

It may be supposed that many long pages, conceived in this spirit and
expressed with great vigor, would hardly smooth the way for the more
official negotiations which were soon to take place, yet Doctor Junius
fairly and faithfully represented the sentiment of his nation.

Towards the close of the year, Doctor Elbertus Leoninus, professor of
Louvain, together with Hugo Bonte, ex-pensionary of Middelburg, was
commissioned by the Grand Commander to treat secretly with the Prince. He
was, however, not found very tractable when the commissioners opened the
subject of his own pardon and reconciliation with the King, and he
absolutely refused to treat at all except with the cooperation of the
estates. He, moreover, objected to the use of the word "pardon" on the
ground that he had never done anything requiring his Majesty's
forgiveness. If adversity should visit him, he cared but little for it;
he had lived long enough, he said, and should die with some glory,
regretting the disorders and oppressions which had taken place, but
conscious that it had not been in his power to remedy them. When reminded
by the commissioners of the King's power, he replied that he knew his
Majesty to be very mighty, but that th