silk. Day after day, year after year, he haunted the old libraries,
whose shadows held so many secrets of the past, until the
personalities of those great heroes who fought for the liberty of
Holland were as familiar as the faces of his own children. William of
Orange, called the Silent, the Washington of Dutch independence, Count
Egmont, Van Horn, and all that band of heroes who espoused the cause
of liberty, came to be comrades.

And the end rewarded the years of toil. Out of old mouldy documents
and dead letters Motley recreated the Netherlands of the sixteenth
century. Again were seen the great cities with their walls miles in
extent, their gay streets, their palaces and churches, and public
buildings, and the great domains of the clergy, second to none in
Europe. The nobles possessed magnificent estates and entertained their
guests with jousts and tourneys like the great lords of England and
France. The tradespeople and artisans who comprised the population
of the cities were divided into societies or guilds, which were so
powerful that no act of state could be passed without their consent,
and so rich that to their entertainments the proudest nobles came
as guests, to see a luxuriousness which vied with that of kings. The
Dutch artists were celebrated for their noble pictures, for their
marvellous skill in wood and stone carving, and for the wonderful
tapestries which alone would have made Dutch art famous.

In the midst of this prosperity Philip II. came to the throne, and
soon after his coronation the entire Netherlands were in revolt.
Motley has described this struggle like an eye-witness. We see the
officers of the Inquisition dragging their victims daily to the
torture-chamber, and the starved and dying rebels defending their
cities through sieges which the Spanish army made fiendish in
suffering. Motley's description of the siege of Leyden, and his
portrait of William the Silent, are among the finest specimens of
historical composition.

The work ends with the death of the Prince of Orange, this tragic
event forming a fitting climax to the great revolution which had
acknowledged him its hope and leader.

Motley carried the completed manuscript of _The Rise of the Dutch
Republic_ to London, but failing to find a publisher willing to
undertake such a work by an unknown author, he was obliged to produce
it at his own expense. It met with the most flattering reception,
and the reviews which appeared in Engl