getic, opulent, powerful, passionate, unruly Ghent--was now the
focus of discord, the centre from whence radiated not the light and
warmth of reasonable and intelligent liberty, but the bale-fires of
murderous licence and savage anarchy. The second city of the Netherlands,
one of the wealthiest and most powerful cities of Christendom, it had
been its fate so often to overstep the bounds of reason and moderation in
its devotion to freedom, so often to incur ignominious chastisement from
power which its own excesses had made more powerful, that its name was
already becoming a bye-word. It now, most fatally and for ever, was to
misunderstand its true position. The Prince of Orange, the great
architect of his country's fortunes, would have made it the keystone of
the arch which he was laboring to construct. Had he been allowed to
perfect his plan, the structure might have endured for ages, a perpetual
bulwark against, tyranny and wrong. The temporary and slender frame by
which the great artist had supported his arch while still unfinished, was
plucked away by rude and ribald hands; the keystone plunged into the
abyss, to be lost for ever, and the great work of Orange remained a
fragment from its commencement. The acts of demagogues, the conservative
disgust at licence, the jealousy of rival nobles, the venality of
military leaders, threw daily fresh stumbling-blocks in his heroic path.
It was not six months after the advent of Farnese to power, before that
bold and subtle chieftain had seized the double-edged sword of religious
dissension as firmly as he had grasped his celebrated brand when he
boarded the galley of Muatapha Bey, and the Netherlands were cut in
twain, to be re-united nevermore. The separate treaty of the Walloon
provinces was soon destined to separate the Celtic and Romanesque
elements from the Batavian and Frisian portion of a nationality, which;
thoroughly fused in all its parts, would have formed as admirable a
compound of fire and endurance as history has ever seen.

Meantime, the grass was growing and the cattle were grazing in the
streets of Ghent, where once the tramp of workmen going to and from their
labor was like the movement of a mighty army. The great majority of the
burghers were of the Reformed religion, and disposed to make effectual
resistance to the Malcontents, led by the disaffected nobles. The city,
considering itself the natural head of all the southern country, was
indignant that the W