s-General, in which the republican authorities after expressing
themselves towards him with great propriety, and affectionate respect,
gave him plainly but delicately to understand that his presence at that
time in the United Provinces would neither be desirable, nor, without
their passports, possible. They were quite aware of the uses to which the
king was hoping to turn their reverence for the memory and the family of
the great martyr, and were determined to foil such idle projects on the
threshold.

The Archduke Albert, born on 3rd of November, 1560, was now in his
thirty-sixth year. A small, thin, pale-faced man, with fair hair, and
beard, commonplace features, and the hereditary underhanging Burgundian
jaw prominently developed, he was not without a certain nobility of
presence. His manners were distant to haughtiness and grave to solemnity.
He spoke very little and very slowly. He had resided long in Spain, where
he had been a favourite with his uncle--as much as any man could be a
favourite with Philip--and he had carefully formed himself on that royal
model. He looked upon the King of Spain as the greatest, wisest, and best
of created beings, as the most illustrious specimen of kingcraft ever yet
vouchsafed to the world. He did his best to look sombre and Spanish, to
turn his visage into a mask; to conceal his thoughts and emotions, not
only by the expression of his features but by direct misstatements of his
tongue, and in all things to present to the obedient Flemings as
elaborate a reproduction of his great prototype as copy can ever recall
inimitable original. Old men in the Netherlands; who remembered in how
short a time Philip had succeeded, by the baleful effect of his personal
presence, in lighting up a hatred which not the previous twenty years of
his father's burnings, hangings, and butcherings in those provinces had
been able to excite, and which forty subsequent years of bloodshed had
not begun to allay, might well shake their heads when they saw this new
representative of Spanish authority. It would have been wiser--so many
astute politicians thought--for Albert to take the Emperor Charles for
his model, who had always the power of making his tyranny acceptable to
the Flemings, through the adroitness with which he seemed to be entirely
a Fleming himself.

But Albert, although a German, valued himself on appearing like a
Spaniard. He was industrious, regular in his habits, moderate in eating
and dri