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their native country so universal, among none so all-powerful as among the children of mountains. Even when richest and most powerful abroad, they have been known to sigh for the poverty of their own hills. We all prize most highly what we have earned at the greatest expense of labor and patience -who has to work harder, who to wait more humbly for the blessing that comes from above, than those who hunt the chamois on threatening paths, or who till the soil that they have carried for miles on their shoulders from the distant valley? We all look back upon our hours of tears and gentle sorrow as the sweetest of our life; the heavenly dew then fell upon the germs of our warmest affections, our noblest impulses, and now they bud and blossom. The mountaineer, also, in his narrow home, sees in every rock but a grave-stone that covers one he has loved, in every tree a memento of dangers endured or losses inflicted. So he clings to his own native land, rich in memories, fertile in associations; he nestles in the bosom of that nature which he has ever looked up to as his loving mother, and neither the riches of cities nor the beauty of plains can ever wean him from his early, tender love. Even physical influence strengthens this feeling; the children of lofty highlands bear the denser air of lower regions as ill and as impatiently as the sons of the plain the purer air of mountains.

Isolated as they are from the rest of the world, its dangers and its temptations, leading a lonely life, with simple joys and simple wants, they have everywhere preserved longest of all the virtues of moral purity and strict honesty. What traveler in Europe has not noticed at once the striking difference, in Alps or Apennines, between the men that live near the much frequented passes, or popular high-roads, and those that dwell in remoter villages? Far away in the heart of the mountains, in narrow valleys and secluded glens, the wanderer often meets with a simplicity and honesty that have long since passed away from the plains below, and that seems still to exhale the perfume of early, happier days. When the inhabitants of Kamaum, on the Himalaya, leave their higher villages to go down for a season to the sheltered valleys, not a soul is left behind, and a few simple latches of wood protect safely all they possess upon

earth. Yet a theft has not been heard of for ages. Even in the Swiss Alps, bee-hives may be seen scattered far and near, on sunny rocks, near fragrant meadows, which are left there for the summer in trusting and honored confidence. The foot-wanderer through the Austrian Alps may also recollect the touching reliance with which his guide drops his burdensome coat by the wayside, sure to find it again, upon his

return.

Even in point of art some features may be found peculiar to the children of mountains. Almost all over the globe, they are found to love music with genuine fondness; and what gives to their airs a surprising resemblance in all Alpine regions on earth is, the neverfailing introduction of the echo into their melodies. Nature herself seems to have taught them, moreover, a certain love for pleasant colors and contrasts. Even in regions where the landscape is nowise remarkable for brilliant lights and lively colors, as in the Scotch Highlands, the same peculiarity may be observed. In the plain, the eye soon loses sight of all detail, and wanders wearily over the vast expanse of uniform color. In the mountains, on the contrary, brilliant contrasts abound: here it is the fresh green of luxuriant grass by the side of the rich hues of Alpine flowers; there the stern, gray granite rock sets off to perfection the clear, silvery stream of foaming waters that plays merrily over its surface. Their dwellings, also, are everywhere alike, from the Alps to the Ural, from the Pyrenees to the Andes. The use of the same material-massive logs of wood-must needs produce in itself a certain similarity of forms; but what is less easily explained is the equally universal peculiarity, that all mountain races build their houses with roofs but little sloping, although for months and months heavy masses of snow rest upon them. With touching simplicity they also love everywhere to paint, on the carvings and cornices of their houses, quaint legends which express their confidence in the great Father in heaven. "I, John Gotthelf, built this house; but God gave His blessing!" Their whole life is summed up in the words: "In this house I live on earth,

Here I and mine have had our birth-
But my home is above
With the great God of Love!"

MR

THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC.*

R. MOTLEY has chosen, for his début on the historic stage, one of the most significant episodes in the whole of the early struggles of the modern era. The revolt of the Netherlands, against the political and ecclesiastical domination of Spain, was a part of that great contest carried on throughout the sixteenth century, between the Teutonic Protestant nations, with their decided tendency to intellectual freedom and territorial division, and the Romanic Catholic nations, with their no less decided bias towards intellectual acquiescence, and the unity of government. It was, however, a most pregnant part of this contest. All the influences of race, politics, and religion, which came in conflict in the general movements of the age, were concentrated in these lesser conflicts, and it is no exaggeration to say, that in the encounters which took place on the spongy sands, and amid the watery dykes of the Low Countries, were involved all the grand interests of the existing world. They rehearsed in little, if we may use the term, that gigantic drama of war and bloodshed, which, a few years later, convulsed the entire continent.

It is this fact which lends to the Dutch war its high importance in worldhistory. Had it been simply the struggle of a few oppressed provinces against a powerful invader, it would have found many a parallel in the course of the ages; but it was a great deal more than this: it was a direct and determining grapple between the controlling influences of the time, animated by its profoundest animosities, and containing in its results a magnificent or disastrous future. Ever since the accession of Charles V. to the crowns of Spain and the Empire, the real and pervading issue of Europe lay in the necessary antagonism of the principles of universality and absolutism in church and state, and the principles of national independence, and civil and moral freedom. The for

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many, and the no less distracted commercial provinces of the Netherlands. Charles V., and, subsequently, Philip II., who inherited his policy, if not his wisdom, in seeking the formation of a great state which should possess a common government, and a common religion, encountered their most formidable obstacles in the spirit which had been growing for centuries, of national independence, intellectual culture.commercial activity, and religious freedom. In Germany, the intellectual and moral element of this opposition was the strongest, and came to a head earlier in the outbreak of Luther; but in the Netherlands, the national and commercial element prevailed, and was sometime longer in ripening. But wherever these principles came in contact, the encounter was deadly and fearful, and nowhere more so than in the Netherlands, because nowhere were the antagonisms more direct, universal, and inveterate.

The people of the Netherlands, mainly descended from the old Batavian and Belgic races, who, overcome by the superior forces of the. Romans, had contributed, for four centuries, the most effective arm to the legions of their conquerors, were earlier than the rest of Europe emancipated from the serfdom of the middle ages. Their favorable position on the north seas, and on the shores of navigable streams, outlets to the continent, gathering them into towns, had led them to a profitable commerce, and to a most flourishing external and political condition. The affluence flowing in upon them from east and west, attracted population, generated arts, enlivened society, and developed, while it fortified, the sense of individual dignity and worth. Along with the growing trade, therefore, a growing independence, entrenched behind municipal privileges, had inured them to self-trust and free exertion. As early as the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the power of the sovereign in the Netherlands was strictly limited by the power of the estates, in which the trades, as well as the nobility, were represented. Without their consent no law could be

The Rise of the Dutch Republic. A History. By JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 3 vols. Harper & Brothers, 1856.

enacted, no war undertaken, no tax imposed, no change in the currency effected, and no foreigner allowed to take part in the government. This substantial liberty had been retained even under the rule of the powerful Dukes of Burgundy, who sought to reduce them to subjection. When the Emperor Maximilian, at a later day, backed by all the might of the Roman German empire, endeavored to inflict extraordinary taxes upon them, and to quarter his troops in the provinces, they instantly flew to arms, and made no scruple of seizing his person, and confining hin till they had attained satisfactory assurances of future security. They were republicans in spirit, if not in name. They prized that sturdy burgher independence which had made them what they were, and, at a time of almost universal war and universal abjectness, had not only raised their cities into cities of opulence, but had made them, also, cities of refuge for the world. Under these circumstances, the transition from civil to religious freedom was not difficult. At the oncoming of the Reforma tion, the Netherlanders were nominally Catholics; but nowhere were the new doctrines more gratefully welcomed than among them, or more rapidly spread. Introduced through a thousand channels-by the Protestant traders of Germany, by the English and French fugitives from persecution, by their own children educated at Geneva, by the Swiss mercenaries of the Emperor, even-they speedily diffused themselves over the land, like the waters of the sea when one of their dykes had broken. A hard-working people, they had little respect for the luxurious indolence of the monks; and a plain, simple-hearted people, they were more attracted by the intellectual charms of doctrine than by the sensuous splendors of ritual.

The Spanish nation, on the other hand, by nature arrogant, and by training superstitious and bigoted, was the willing slave of a double despotism, of a mighty but oppressive monarchy, and of an imposing but subtle and selfish ecclesiasticism. Its recent conquest of Grenada had rekindled its enthusiasm to the fiery pitch of the crusades, its discovery of the New World had given a vent to the most romantic spirit of adventure, as well as to the most ferocious cupidity; while the magnifi

VOL. VII.-38

cent extent of its dominion filled it with unbounded audacity and pride. Every incident in the events of the time conspired to raise in the mind of the Spaniard the dangerous consciousness of his greatness. Master of half of Europe, and of nearly all America, with possessions in Africa, in Asia, and among the rich Spice Islands of the Indian seas, the favorite of the Holy Pontiff, himself the vicegerent of Christ, and the spiritual guide of a hundred million souls, he seemed to hold the keys to all the treasures of earth, and to all the glorious rewards of Heaven. He was the lord of man, and the man of the Lord; he had fused the powerful kingdoms of the peninsula into a single more powerful kingdom; he had driven the Saracen from Europe in the midst of a sanguinary resistance; he had been victorious over France; he had ravaged Italy; he had dared to beard the pope, and he had despoiled a new continent of its wealth. His statesmen were the ablest that had appeared since the most flourishing days of Greece, and his soldiers the bravest that had appeared since the most flourishing days of Rome. His soldiers, indeed, were brave with more than Roman bravery; for, to the animal courage and national ambition of the Roman, they added the romantic valor of chivalry and the impulsive zeal as well as the stoical endurance of religion. It was not surprising, then, that the Spaniard should pride himself on his superiority among the nations; yet, more than the triumph of his arms, and more than the seductions of his policy, he valued the steadfastness which had distinguished his faith, and rendered him its elected champion. At a time when the people everywhere were falling away from the ancient church, like leaves from a smitten tree-when Germany, Holland, England, France, Sweden, and Switzerland, were stirred to their depths by religious schism, and even Italy was retained in the fold of the faithful only by the profound craft of a milder and more liberal policy on the part of Rome-the Spaniard remained unaffected. The result of the agitation, so far as man could see, had been to induce him to draw tighter the bands of intolerance, and to heap fresh fuel upon the fires of the inquisition. "Times of refreshing," as Macaulay says, "came to all neighboring countries;

but one people alone remained, like the fleece of the Hebrew warrior, dry in the midst of that benignant and fertilizing dew. Among the men of the sixteenth century, the Spaniard was the man of the fifteenth century, or of a still darker period-delighted to behold. an auto da fé, or ready to volunteer on a crusade."

It was the mistake of Philip II., when he came to reign over these two peoples, more remote from each other in their spiritual affinities than in their local positions, to suppose that he could transfer the institutions of the one to the soil of the other, and change, by the stroke of a pen, the inwrought results of centuries. Receiving the Provinces at the moment of their highest bloom, when they contained more flourishing towns than there were days in the year, when the revenues exacted from them were more copious than all the mines of South America, when the temper of the people, made moderate by plenty and content, was remarkably placable, there was nothing easier for him than to have retained their allegiance and support. He had only, like a wise statesman, to adapt his measures to the inevitable exigencies of the situation. But Philip was not a statesman. A Spaniard of the Spaniards, with the worst traits of his nation, aggravated by the gloomy, monkish education he had received, dark, revengeful, and superstitious, without one generous sentiment, or a single noble ambition, he had conceived an ideal of government better fitted to the satraps of an oriental tyrant than to the court of a Christian monarch. His father, Charles V., though scarcely less a despot in action than he, was a despot who had tempered his rule by seeming friendly concessions, and extinguished the perception of his wrongs amid the blaze of his brilliant exploits. Born among the Flemings, he had surrounded his person with Flemings; and the Flemings received some of the reflected lustre of his glory. He was arbitrary, but arbitrary from policy, and not, as Philip was, from preference. Narrowness, bigotry, and hatred were the inborn qualities of the son, who had achieved no great deeds to awaken admiration, and who exhibited no tenderness to conciliate love. Distrusted and disliked by his northern subjects, from the very hour when, a young man, he bad shown himself reserved and haughty

amid the genial festivities of the celebrated abdication, he returned their aversion with a double venom. He never comprehended the sturdy citizen independence of those prosperous burghers; he never sympathzied in their pursuits, nor admired their lowly citizenlike virtues; he was impatient of their traditional privileges; he was piqued by their boasts of freedom; he was jealous of those among their nobles whom he did not despise, and he scorned their seeming feebleness. Had they never aroused his deep religious enmities, they would not have been his favorites; but when they gave an eager entrance to the Reformation, when, in the natural over-action of a new movement which had been long suppressed, their rabble broke the images of his saints, and scattered the sacred relics of his sanctuary, they were, from that instant, doomed to an unheard of vengeance. They were doomed, however, not in a frenzy of exasperation, not in the heat of outraged prejudices nor in a sudden burst of unreasoning resentment, but with slow, cold, calculating, subtle, and implacable malignity. For with him the name of heretic was the synonym of miscreant, wretch, criminal, outcast, and of whatever else is odious to man, and abandoned of God. The inhuman theology of the time he sincerely believed, and he was prepared to enforce its remorseless sanctions with all the cowled treacheries of the inquisition, and all the overbearing energies of the first of states. Active in brain, but inactive in body, his movements were wily, rather than impetuous, though he always contrived that they should be fatal. If he hastened his purposes, it was only to anticipate the chances of possible escape; and when he tarried in them, it was only to render the means more sure, and the execution final. Thus, it is impossible to read his memoirs without thinking of him, as he sat amid the schemes of his far-reaching empire, as of some sullen and gigantic spider in the midst of his web, entrapping his poor victims on every hand, and darting forth only when their struggles threaten to break through the infernal meshes.

The agents whom Philip selected, for the execution of his vengeance upon the offending Netherlands, were the fit implements of his double nature, as a churchman and a king. They were first the Cardinal Granville, and afterwards

the Duke of Alva-the one as subtle an ecclesiastic as ever concealed the fires of hell beneath the smiles of heaven, and the other as inflexible a soldier as ever stalked through rivers of blood to do a master's will. Granville, whose real name was Anthony Peronet, was a Frenchman by birth, and had taken his first lessons in state-craft under Charles V., as his deputy at the Council of Trent. He had served the Emperor, also, in subsequent negotiations, and had had the adroitness to get himself retained in the service of the son. Secretary to Margaret of Parma, the nominal regent of the Netherlands, he speedily made himself the real regent. To a mind of rare penetration and comprehensiveness, he united great learning, great diligence, great patience, and the most remarkable facility in devising and unraveling of plots. He was always at his post and always prepared for the event. Penetrating to the depths of his master's mind, he apprehended his wishes almost before they were formed, and he carried them into effect with a graceful audacity, which flattered the imperial self-love, without surprising its vanity. Devoted to the throne, more even than to the church, fertile in expedients, indefatigable in labor, and of polished and insinuating manners, he grew the indispensable confidant of Philip. But he was more successful in gaining the friendship of his sovereign, than he was in appeasing the discontents of his subjects. All the acts of the government being charged to him, he became an intolerable offense to the nobles as well as to the people; and, after much delay, and with great reluctance on the part of the king, but not until he had sowed the seeds of irreconcilable divisions, he was compelled to retire before the storm which they raised against him. As a foreigner, his official existence there was a violation of the ancient constitution. Surrounding himself with foreigners, he had repulsed the entire body of the native aristocracy; retaining an extraordinary force of Spanish troops in the country, he had to bear the brunt of their repeated misconduct; quartering a multitude of new bishops on the dioceses, he had offended religious prejudices and increased the taxes; and, favoring secretly the processes of the inquisition, he had alarmed the suspicions and fears of the the people, through whom the very name of that tribunal sent a thrill horror.

But Philip had dallied and equivocated in regard to his removal, until the discontents had spread through all classes of the nobility, and down among the lowest ranks of the populace. A timelier intervention might have relieved the state of affairs; but, on the recall of Granville, matters had gone so far that the slight concessions announced but whetted the rage for more, and there remained no alternative for Philip, but to yield to an extent which would have damaged his supremacy, or to settle the difficulties at once, with the iron hand. True to his nature, he made choice of a governor, to supersede the feeble and trembling Margaret, whose selection, apart from the enormous power with which he was invested, would have shown to which side of this alternative he inclined. The Duke of Alva was sent into the Netherlands, after a pompous preliminary parade, and at the head of ten thousand men. A person better adapted to the execution of Philip's designs did not then exist. He was the foremost warrior of Europe, who had triumphed on every field but one; and as distinguished for the asperity of his manners as he was for the intrepidity of his valor. "As a man," says Mr. Motley, somewhat naively, "his character was simple. He did not combine a great variety of vices, but those which he had were colossal, and he possessed no virtues. He was neither lustful nor intemperate, but his professed eulogists admitted his enormous avarice, while the world has agreed that such an amount of stealth and ferocity, of patient vindictiveness and universal bloodthirstiness, were never found in a savage beast of the forest, and but rarely in a human bosom."

Inexperienced as a statesman, and without talent, save in his profession, this soulless, cast-iron man was master of the methods of the soldier, which move "straightforward, like a cannon-ball,” to their ends, and he joined to them the craftier methods of the inquisition. His administration, beginning with the Judas-like betrayal of Counts Egmont and Horn, followed by their worse than Pilate-like trial and execution-murders almost unparalleled, for the pathetic interest which clings to the victims, and for the reckless atrocity in the perpetrators -was marked throughout by every vice that may proclaim a tyranny. Mr. Motley has summed up the results in the fol

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