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Ritter, in his travels through Abyssinia, was long since led to the conclusion, that hospitality was at home in every Alpine region, in spite of their equally universal poverty.

What is, perhaps, least carefully noticed by the general observer in this kind of High Life is, the nomadic character of almost all dwellers on mountains. The sterility of the soil, in connection with the general activity of the race, drives them constantly away from their native land and leads them to emigrate, at least for a time, to distant countries, partly to sell there the products of their own industry and partly to seek there an ampler income and a provision for their declining years. Thus we find the brave Swiss serving foreign masters with a touching fidelity that makes ample amends for his mercenary service, whilst the humbler son of Savoy is content to clean chimneys and to play his hurdy-gurdy. The poor, frugal Gallego is found all over Spain, as cold Dalarm sends out her sons in winter, and her daughters in summer, to earn a living in Stockholm. The Fulah and the Zemindar of Kamaum but repeat in Africa and Asia the example of the Galician Pole on the northern Carpathian mountains. But from east and west, from north and south, they all gather again around their early home, ere the silver cord be loosed and the golden bowl broken.

Even on their own mountains, these hardy children of men often lead a life that somewhat resembles the wandering life of the nomad. Thousands earn a scanty living by traveling, without rest and repose, over high, steep passes, and through dangerous valleys, followed by long lines of heavily-laden beasts of burden; others, who live by their cattle, change from the lofty senn-huts in summer to the well-sheltered valleys in winter, whilst in the Himalaya they have special villages built for each season.

In their migrations they depend, like the nomads of the steppes, on the cattle that feed and clothe them. High up to the line of perpetual snow they drive their herds of gigantic oxen. Where horned cattle and even sheep no longer find green pastures, there the goat still knows how to support itself by frugal diet. But when even the most modest of our domestic cattle would starve, bountiful nature still furnishes two beings, so rarely endowed, so mar

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velously fitted for their exclusive abode, that they have ever been noted as striking evidences of the wisdom and bounty of the Creator. The one is the reindeer, the all-useful friend of man in high northern regions. The other is the Yak, or grunting ox, which nature has fitted to live in the snow-covered mountains of inner Asia, on the very highest table-land of our globe, which the children of the soil call, in their expressive language, the “dwelling of snow," or the "roof of the world." A small buffalo in appearance, his long, shaggy hair, with which he is covered all over, sweeps the ground, and ends at the tail in a large and magnificent tuft. Independent of wind and weather, he lives wherever the mean temperature does not rise above the freezing point. the snows become too deep above, he rolls himself down a sloping mountainside and feeds while slowly ascending; when he reaches the summit, he rolls down again and eats a second deep furrow into the snow. When summer approaches he ascends to the regions of eternal snow, and the inhabitants leave their sheltered valleys and follow their numerous herds. They live on their milk, they eat their flesh, and dress them skins. Their long hair makes ropes stronger than hemp, and the bushy tail is eagerly purchased for fans and fly brushes. What is strangest, perhaps, is their use for the saddle. Wherever a man can walk, there the ox may be ridden. His intelligence is marvelous, often surpassing the far-famed cunning of elephants. When travelers have lost their way, one of these animals is driven ahead, and avoids with almost miraculous instinct all hidden clefts and crevices. When the passes are filled with snow, and neither man nor horse cross the mountains, a herd of grunting oxen is sent on and soon tramples the snow sufficiently down to open a passage.

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Need we wonder that the mountaineer loves his home, even to homesickness? Have not cows, exported from Switzerland, become maddened when suddenly hearing the Ranz des vaches? The French government, it is well known, had to prohibit the playing of certain Swiss airs in the presence of the Swiss regiments, because it was never done without causing more than one of that noble band to die of a broken heart! Among no class of men is the love of

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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!"

• THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC.*

MR. 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. and worth. Along with the growing trade, therefore, a growing independ ence, 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 him 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 Reformation, 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 had 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 believ ed, 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

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