nded far and wide over what should have been dry land. The
great ship channel, with the unconquered Half-moon upon one side and
the incomplete batteries and platforms of Bucquoy on the other, still
defiantly opened its passage to the sea, and the retiring fleets of the
garrison were white in the offing. All around was the grey expanse of
stormy ocean, without a cape or a headland to break its monotony, as the
surges rolled mournfully in upon a desolation more dreary than their
own. The atmosphere was murky and surcharged with rain, for the wild,
equinoctial storm which had held Maurice spell-bound, had been raging
over land and sea for many days. At every step the unburied skulls of
brave soldiers who had died in the cause of freedom, grinned their
welcome to the conquerors. Isabella wept at the sight. She had cause to
weep. Upon that miserable sandbank more than a hundred thousand men had
laid down their lives by her decree, in order that she and her husband
might at last take possession of a most barren prize. This insignificant
fragment of a sovereignty which her wicked old father had presented to
her on his deathbed--a sovereignty which he had no more moral right or
actual power to confer than if it had been in the planet Saturn--had
at last been appropriated at the cost of all this misery. It was of no
great value, although its acquisition had caused the expenditure of at
least eight millions of florins, divided in nearly equal proportions
between the two belligerents. It was in vain that great immunities were
offered to those who would remain, or who would consent to settle in the
foul Golgotha. The original population left the place in mass. No human
creatures were left save the wife of a freebooter and her paramour, a
journeyman blacksmith. This unsavory couple, to whom entrance into the
purer atmosphere of Zeeland was denied, thenceforth shared with the
carrion crows the amenities of Ostend.

* * * * *

From the Preface to the "Rise of the Dutch Republic."

=_141._= THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC.

The rise of the Dutch Republic must ever be regarded as one of the
leading events of modern times. Without the birth of this great
commonwealth, the various historical phenomena of the sixteenth and
following centuries must have either not existed, or have presented
themselves under essential modifications.... From the handbreadth of
territory called the province of Holland, rises a