ubject like history, no ordinary work was to
be looked for from his hands. With diligence in accumulating
materials, and patient care in elaborating them, he could scarcely
fail to attain distinguished excellence. The present volume was well
calculated to fulfil such expectations. The _Revolt of the
Netherlands_ possesses all the common requisites of a good history,
and many which are in some degree peculiar to itself. The information
it conveys is minute and copious; we have all the circumstances of the
case, remote and near, set distinctly before us. Yet, such is the
skill of the arrangement, these are at once briefly and impressively
presented. The work is not stretched out into a continuous narrative;
but gathered up into masses, which are successively exhibited to view,
the minor facts being grouped around some leading one, to which, as
to the central object, our attention is chiefly directed. This method
of combining the details of events, of proceeding as it were, _per
saltum_, from eminence to eminence, and thence surveying the
surrounding scene, is undoubtedly the most philosophical of any: but
few men are equal to the task of effecting it rightly. It must be
executed by a mind able to look on all its facts at once; to
disentangle their perplexities, referring each to its proper head; and
to choose, often with extreme address, the station from which the
reader is to view them. Without this, or with this inadequately done,
a work on such a plan would be intolerable. Schiller has accomplished
it in great perfection; the whole scene of affairs was evidently clear
before his own eye, and he did not want expertness to discriminate and
seize its distinctive features. The bond of cause and consequence he
never loses sight of; and over each successive portion of his
narrative he pours that flood of intellectual and imaginative
brilliancy, which all his prior writings had displayed. His
reflections, expressed or implied, are the fruit of strong,
comprehensive, penetrating thought. His descriptions are vivid; his
characters are studied with a keen sagacity, and set before us in
their most striking points of view; those of Egmont and Orange occur
to every reader as a rare union of perspicacity and eloquence. The
work has a look of order; of beauty joined to calm reposing force. Had
it been completed, it might have ranked as the very best of Schiller's
prose compositions. But no second volume ever came to light; and the
fi