government, unable to carry on the war any longer without risk
of utter bankruptcy, and daily crippled in its resources by the attacks
of the Dutch navy, grudgingly a reed to a truce upon the Netherlanders'
terms, it virtually acknowledged its own defeat and the downfall of the
principles for which it had so obstinately fought. By the truce of
1609 the republican principle was admitted by the most despotic of
governments.

Here was the first great triumph of republicanism over monarchy; and it
was not long in bearing fruits. For the Dutch revolution, the settlement
of America by English Puritans, the great rebellion of the Commons, the
Revolution of 1688, the revolt of the American Colonies, and the general
overthrow of feudalism in 1789, are but successive acts in the same
drama William the Silent was the worthy forerunner of Cromwell and
Washington; and but for the victory which he won, during his life and
after his untimely death, the subsequent triumphs of civil liberty might
have been long, postponed.

Over the sublime figure of William--saevis tranquillus in undis--we
should be glad to dwell, but we are not reviewing the "Rise of the Dutch
Republic," and in Mr. Motley's present volumes the hero of toleration
appears no longer. His antagonist, however,--the Philip whom God for
some inscrutable purpose permitted to afflict Europe during a reign of
forty-two years,--accompanies us nearly to the end of the present work,
dying just in time for the historian to sum up the case against him,
and pronounce final judgment. For the memory of Philip II. Mr. Motley
cherishes no weak pity. He rarely alludes to him without commenting upon
his total depravity, and he dismisses him with the remark that "if
there are vices--as possibly there are--from which he was exempt, it
is because it is not permitted to human nature to attain perfection in
evil." The verdict is none the less just because of its conciseness. If
there ever was a strife between Hercules and Cacus, between Ormuzd and
Ahriman, between the Power of Light and the Power of Darkness, it
was certainly the strife between the Prince of Orange and the Spanish
Monarch. They are contrasted like the light and shade in one of Dore's
pictures. And yet it is perhaps unnecessary for Mr. Motley to say that
if Philip had been alive when Spinola won for him the great victory of
Ostend, "he would have felt it his duty to make immediate arrangements
for poisoning him." Doubtless the