ly wounded! My God, have pity on my soul and this poor people!"
and this, save his whispered "Yes" to his sister's eager inquiry if he
trusted his soul to Jesus, were his last words, so that, as his country
had been his thought through many turbulent years, so was it his last
thought and love--a fitting word for a patriot such as he to leave on
his dead lips. Let the historian's verdict stand as ours, "His life
was a noble Christian epic."

A statesman is a man of his own and succeeding ages, and in him,
therefore, is much anticipatory. He outruns his time. The vision
William the Silent had, which outran the simple patriot in him, was the
vision of religious tolerance. This might serve him for crown had he
no other. What the world has learned to do, that this Dutch prince
taught--virtually first of modern statesmen. In an utterly intolerant
age and country, he apostled manly tolerance. In a later day, John of
Barneveldt came to the block because he was an Arminian. Protestants,
though never wholesale persecutors, had yet to learn this wise man's
lesson. And this must rank among the underscored virtues of this old
soldier of liberty, that he wished men to worship God without
molestation. Nor did this tolerance grow out of indifference to
religion. In youth he was careless of Divine matters, and thought
little of religion. But so sagacious and so burdened a man as he grew
to feel need of strength beyond the help of man. In his mature years
he was from conviction a Christian in the Protestant Church, and his
life walked on high levels to the end. God was to him as to
innumerable souls, "a refuge and strength and a very present help in
time of trouble;" and in death he committed his soul to God. By worth
and service; by fortitude and patriotism; by long years of devotion to
the task of breaking the scepter of tyranny; by genius burning as the
light, and goodness purifying itself as years marched past,--by these
attributes has William the Silent, Prince of Orange, earned a right to
stand erect among the world's immortals.

V

The Romance of American Geography

In traveling over the undulating prairies of many States of the Union,
huge granite boulders are seen lying solitary, as if dropped by some
passing cloud, having no kindred in the rocky formations environing,
but being absolute foreigners in a strange land. There they lie,
prone, chiseled by some forgotten art, and so solitary as to bring a