been depopulated.
The grass began to grow in the streets of those cities which had recently
nourished so many artisans. In all those great manufacturing and
industrial marts, where the tide of human life had throbbed so
vigorously, there now reigned the silence and the darkness of midnight.
It was at this time that the learned Viglius wrote to his friend Hopper,
that all venerated the prudence and gentleness of the Duke of Alva. Such
were among the first-fruits of that prudence and that gentleness.

The Duchess of Parma had been kept in a continued state of irritation.
She had not ceased for many months to demand her release from the odious
position of a cipher in a land where she had so lately been sovereign,
and she had at last obtained it. Philip transmitted his acceptance of her
resignation by the same courier who brought Alva's commission to be
governor-general in her place. The letters to the Duchess were full of
conventional compliments for her past services, accompanied, however,
with a less barren and more acceptable acknowledgment, in the shape of a
life income of 14,000 ducats instead of the 8000 hitherto enjoyed by her
Highness.

In addition to this liberal allowance, of which she was never to be
deprived, except upon receiving full payment of 140,000 ducats, she was
presented with 25,000 florins by the estates of Brabant, and with 30,000
by those of Flanders.

With these substantial tokens of the success of her nine years' fatigue
and intolerable anxiety, she at last took her departure from the
Netherlands, having communicated the dissolution of her connexion with
the provinces by a farewell letter to the Estates dated 9th December,
1567. Within a few weeks afterwards, escorted by the Duke of Alva across
the frontier of Brabant; attended by a considerable deputation of Flemish
nobility into Germany, and accompanied to her journey's end at Parma by
the Count and Countess of Mansfeld, she finally closed her eventful
career in the Netherlands.

The horrors of the succeeding administration proved beneficial to her
reputation. Upon the dark ground of succeeding years the lines which
recorded her history seemed written with letters of light. Yet her
conduct in the Netherlands offers but few points for approbation, and
many for indignant censure. That she was not entirely destitute of
feminine softness and sentiments of bounty, her parting despatch to her
brother proved. In that letter she recommended to him a