council,
another and still greater personage came upon the scene.

The Stadholder with the deputation from the States-General arrived at
Utrecht.

Evidently the threads of this political drama were converging to a
catastrophe, and it might prove a tragical one.

Meantime all looked merry enough in the old episcopal city. There were
few towns in Lower or in Upper Germany more elegant and imposing than
Utrecht. Situate on the slender and feeble channel of the ancient Rhine
as it falters languidly to the sea, surrounded by trim gardens and
orchards, and embowered in groves of beeches and limetrees, with busy
canals fringed with poplars, lined with solid quays, and crossed by
innumerable bridges; with the stately brick tower of St. Martin's rising
to a daring height above one of the most magnificent Gothic cathedrals in
the Netherlands; this seat of the Anglo-Saxon Willebrord, who eight
hundred years before had preached Christianity to the Frisians, and had
founded that long line of hard-fighting, indomitable bishops, obstinately
contesting for centuries the possession of the swamps and pastures about
them with counts, kings, and emperors, was still worthy of its history
and its position.

It was here too that sixty-one years before the famous Articles of Union
were signed. By that fundamental treaty of the Confederacy, the Provinces
agreed to remain eternally united as if they were but one province, to
make no war nor peace save by unanimous consent, while on lesser matters
a majority should rule; to admit both Catholics and Protestants to the
Union provided they obeyed its Articles and conducted themselves as good
patriots, and expressly declared that no province or city should
interfere with another in the matter of divine worship.

From this memorable compact, so enduring a landmark in the history of
human freedom, and distinguished by such breadth of view for the times
both in religion and politics, the city had gained the title of cradle of
liberty: 'Cunabula libertatis'.

Was it still to deserve the name? At that particular moment the mass of
the population was comparatively indifferent to the terrible questions
pending. It was the kermis or annual fair, and all the world was keeping
holiday in Utrecht. The pedlars and itinerant merchants from all the
cities and provinces had brought their wares jewellery and crockery,
ribbons and laces, ploughs and harrows, carriages and horses, cows and
sheep, cheeses and b