rty--must look
with affectionate interest upon the trials of the elder commonwealth.
These volumes recite the achievement of Dutch independence, for its
recognition was delayed till the acknowledgment was superfluous and
ridiculous. The existence of the Republic is properly to be dated from
the Union of Utrecht in 1581, while the final separation of territory
into independent and obedient provinces, into the Commonwealth of the
United States and the Belgian provinces of Spain, was in reality effected
by William the Silent, with whose death three years subsequently, the
heroic period of the history may be said to terminate. At this point
these volumes close. Another series, with less attention to minute
details, and carrying the story through a longer range of years, will
paint the progress of the Republic in its palmy days, and narrate the
establishment of, its external system of dependencies and its interior
combinations for self-government and European counterpoise. The lessons
of history and the fate of free states can never be sufficiently pondered
by those upon whom so large and heavy a responsibility for the
maintenance of rational human freedom rests.

I have only to add that this work is the result of conscientious
research, and of an earnest desire to arrive at the truth. I have
faithfully studied all the important contemporary chroniclers and later
historians--Dutch, Flemish, French, Italian, Spanish, or German. Catholic
and Protestant, Monarchist and Republican, have been consulted with the
same sincerity. The works of Bor (whose enormous but indispensable folios
form a complete magazine of contemporary state-papers, letters, and
pamphlets, blended together in mass, and connected by a chain of artless
but earnest narrative), of Meteren, De Thou, Burgundius, Heuterus;
Tassis, Viglius, Hoofd, Haraeus, Van der Haer, Grotius-of Van der Vynckt,
Wagenaer, Van Wyn, De Jonghe, Kluit, Van Kampen, Dewez, Kappelle,
Bakhuyzen, Groen van Prinsterer--of Ranke and Raumer, have been as
familiar to me as those of Mendoza, Carnero, Cabrera, Herrera, Ulloa,
Bentivoglio, Peres, Strada. The manuscript relations of those Argus-eyed
Venetian envoys who surprised so many courts and cabinets in their most
unguarded moments, and daguerreotyped their character and policy for the
instruction of the crafty Republic, and whose reports remain such an
inestimable source for the secret history of the sixteenth century, have
been carefully ex