distracting every breast. They knew that the wind was unfavorable, and at the dawn of each day every eye was turned wistfully to the vanes of the steeples. So long as the easterly breeze prevailed, they felt, as they anxiously stood on towers and house-tops, that they must look in vain for the welcome ocean.

Yet, while thus patiently waiting, they were literally starving; for even the misery endured at Haarlem* had not reached that depth and intensity of agony to which Leyden was now reduced. Bread, maltcake, horse-flesh, had entirely disappeared; dogs, cats, rats, and other vermin were esteemed luxuries. A small number of cows, kept as long as possible for their milk, still remained; but a few were killed from day to day, and distributed in minute portions, hardly sufficient to support life, among the famishing population. Starving wretches swarmed daily around the shambles where these cattle were slaughtered, contending for any morsel which might fall, and lapping eagerly the blood as it ran along the pavement; while the hides, chopped and boiled, were greedily devoured.

Women and children, all day long, were seen searching gutters and elsewhere for morsels of food, which they disputed fiercely with the famishing dogs. The green leaves were stripped from the trees, every living herb was converted into human food; but these expedients could not avert starvation. The daily mortality was frightful. Infants starved to death on the maternal breasts which famine had parched and withered; mothers dropped dead in the streets, with their dead children in their arms.

In many a house the watchmen, in their rounds, found a whole family of corpses father, mother, children side by side; for a disorder, called "the Plague," naturally engendered of hardship and famine, now came, as if in kindness, to abridge the agony of the people. Pestilence stalked at noonday through the city, and the doomed inhabitants fell like grass beneath his scythe. From six to eight thousand human beings sank before this scourge alone; yet the people resolutely held out, women and men mutually encouraging each other to resist the entrance of their foreign foe,† an evil more horrible than pest or famine.

* HAARLEM. Frederick, the son of Alva, starved the little garrison of Haarlem (20 miles north of Leyden) into a surrender (1573); and then, enraged at the gallant defense they had made, butchered them without mercy. When the executioners were worn out with their bloody work, he tied the three hundred citizens that remained back to back, and flung them into the sca + The Spaniards.

Leyden was sublime in its despair. A few murmurs were, however, occasionally heard at the steadfastness of the magistrates; and a dead body was placed at the door of the burgomaster, as a silent witness against his inflexibility. A party of the more faint-hearted even assailed the heroic Adrian Van der Werf * with threats and reproaches as he passed along the streets. A crowd had gathered around him as he reached a triangular place in the center of the town, into which many of the principal streets emptied themselves, and upon one side of which stood the Church of St. Pancras.

There stood the burgomaster, a tall, haggard, imposing figure, with dark visage and a tranquil but commanding eye. He waved his broad-leaved felt hat for silence, and then exclaimed, in language which has been almost literally preserved, "What would ye, my friends? Why do ye murmur that we do not break our vows and surrender the city to the Spaniards, a fate more horrible than the agony which she now endures? I tell you I have made an oath to hold the city; and may God give me strength to keep my oath! I can die but once, whether by your hands, the enemy's, or by the hand of God. My own fate is indifferent to me; not so that of the city intrusted to my care. I know that we shall starve if not soon relieved; but starvation is preferable to the dishonored death which is the only alternative. Your menaces move me not. My life is at your disposal. Here is my sword; plunge it into my breast, and divide my flesh among you. Take my body to appease your hunger, but expect no surrender so long as I remain alive.”

On the 28th of September a dove flew into the city, bringing a letter from Admiral Boisot.+ In this despatch the position of the fleet at North Aa was described in encouraging terms, and the inhabitants were assured that, in a very few days at furthest, the longexpected relief would enter their gates.

The tempest came to their relief. A violent equinoctial gale, on the night of the 1st and 2d of October, came storming from the northwest, shifting after a few hours fully eight points, and then blowing still more violently from the southwest. The waters of the North Sea were piled in vast masses upon the southern coast of Holland, and then dashed furiously landward, the ocean rising over the earth and sweeping with unrestrained power across the ruined dikes.

* ADRIAN VAN DER WERF, the burgomaster, or chief magistrate of Leyden.

+ ADMIRAL BOISOT, the commander of the Dutch fleet.

In the course of twenty-four hours the fleet at North Aa, instead of nine inches, had more than two feet of water.

On it went, sweeping over the broad waters. As they approached some shallows which led into the great Mere, the Zeelanders dashed into the sea, and with sheer strength shouldered every vessel through!

It was resolved that a sortie, in conjunction with the operations of Boisot, should be made against Lammen* with the earliest dawn. Night descended upon the scene, a pitch-dark night, full of anxiety to the Spaniards, to the Armada, to Leyden. Strange sights and sounds occurred at different moments to bewilder the anxious sentinels. A long procession of lights issuing from the fort was seen to flit across the black face of the waters, in the dead of night; and the whole of the city wall between the Cowgate and the town of Burgundy fell with a loud crash. The horror-struck citizens thought that the Spaniards were upon them at last; the Spaniards imagined the noise to indicate a desperate sortie of the citizens. Everything was vague and mysterious.

Day dawned at length after the feverish night, and the admiral prepared for the assault. Within the fortress reigned a death-like stillness, which inspired a sickening suspicion. Had the city indeed been carried in the night? Had the massacre already commenced? Had all this labor and audacity been expended in vain?

Suddenly a man was descried wading breast-high through the water from Lammen towards the fleet, while at the same time, one solitary boy was seen to wave his cap from the summit of the fort. After a moment of doubt, the happy mystery was solved. The Spaniards had fled panic-struck during the darkness. Their position would still have enabled them, with firmness, to frustrate the enterprise of the patriots; but the hand of God, which had sent the ocean and the tempest to the deliverance of Leyden, had struck her enemies with terror likewise.

The lights which had been seen moving during the night were the lanterns of the retreating Spaniards; and the boy who was now waving his triumphant signal from the battlements had alone witnessed the

* LAMMEN, a fort occupied by the Spaniards, which formed the sole remaining obstacle between the fleet and the city. It swarmed with soldiers and bristled with cannon; and so serious an impediment did Boisot consider it, that he wrote that very night in desponding terms regarding it to the Prince of Orange.

spectacle. So confident was he in the conclusion to which it led him, that he had volunteered at daybreak to go thither alone.

The magistrates, fearing a trap, hesitated for a moment to believe the truth, which soon, however, became quite evident. Valdez,* flying himself from Leyderdorp, had ordered Colonel Borgia to retire with all his troops from Lammen.

Thus the Spaniards had retreated at the very moment that an extraordinary accident had laid bare a whole side of the city for their entrance! The noise of the wall as it fell only inspired them with fresh alarm; for they believed that the citizens had sallied forth in the darkness to aid the advancing flood in the work of destruction.

All obstacles being now removed, the fleet of Boisot swept by Lammen, and entered the city on the morning of the 3d of October. Leyden was relieved!

THE HERO OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC.

No man not even Washington has ever been inspired by a purer patriotism than that of William of Orange. Whether originally of a timid temperament or not, he was certainly possessed of perfect courage at last. In siege and battle, in the deadly air of pestilential cities, in the long exhaustion of mind and body which comes from unduly protracted labor and anxiety, amid the countless conspiracies of assassins, he was daily exposed to death in every shape. Within two years five different attempts against his life had been discovered. Rank and fortune were offered to any malefactor who would compass the murder. He had already been shot through the head, and almost mortally wounded. He went through life bearing the load of a people's sorrows upon his shoulders with a smiling face. Their name was the last word upon his lips, save the simple affirmative with which the soldier who had been battling for the right all his lifetime commended his soul, in dying, "to the great Captain, Christ." The people were grateful and affectionate, for they trusted the character of their “Father William," and not all the clouds which calumny could collect ever dimmed to their eyes the radiance of that lofty mind to which they were accustomed, in their darkest calamities, to look for light. As long as he lived he was the guiding-star of a whole brave nation, and when he died the little children cried in the streets.

* VALDEZ, the Spanish commander. His head-quarters were at Leyderdorp, a mile and a half to the right of Lammen.

FROUDE.

1818

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, the historian, was born in Devonshire, England, in 1818. He graduated at Oxford University, and became a Fellow of Exeter College. His first book was a novel, The Shadows of the Clouds, which had much merit, but is now forgotten. His second was The Nemesis of Faith, a theological work which attracted much attention. But his third essay, in the field of history, was conspicuously successful. His History of England embraces the period between the Fall of Wolsey and the Death of Elizabeth, and furnishes the completest view of that time that has ever been written. In its preparation the author availed himself of a large collection of manuscripts never before discovered, and which threw a strong light upon his subject. Mr. Froude is not absolutely impartial as an historian; he often gives way to his prejudices, and seems to pervert testimony in aid of his own opinions. His treatment of the case of Mary Queen of Scots has been shown to be thoroughly unjust. But he has admirable qualifications for historical writing; his philosophical reflections are judicious, and his style is spirited and forcible. Some of his dramatic passages are equal to any in our historical literature. Although best known, in this country, at least, by his History, Mr. Froude has written many able essays on moral, social, and educational topics, some of which have been collected in a volume entitled Short Studies on Great Subjects, from which the second extract is taken. He is now engaged on a book entitled The English in Ireland, the first volume of which has been published. In 1872 Mr. Froude visited this country on a lecturing tour, and was received with marked cordiality.

EXECUTION OF SIR THOMAS MORE.*

AT daybreak More was awoke by the entrance of Sir Thomas Pope, who had come to confirm his anticipations, and to tell him it was the king's pleasure that he should suffer at nine o'clock that morning. He received the news with utter composure. "I am much bounden to the king," he said, "for the benefits and honors he has bestowed on me; and, so help me God, most of all I am bounden to him that it pleaseth his Majesty to rid me so shortly out of the miseries of this present world."

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Pope told him the king desired that he would not use many words on the scaffold." 'Mr. Pope," he answered, "you do well to give me warning, for otherwise I had purposed somewhat to have spoken; but no matter wherewith his Grace should have cause to be offended.

* SIR THOMAS MORE, a celebrated English philosopher and statesman, born in London in 1480. He was the author of the famous Utopia, a fanciful production written in Latin, describing an imaginary commonwealth in the imaginary island of Utopia, the citizens of which had all things in common. He was a strong Roman Catholic, and wrote tracts against Luther. In October, 1529, he was appointed Lord Chancellor by Henry VIII. in place of the famous Cardinal Wolsey (see extract from Shakespeare's King Henry the Eighth, page 5). Sir Thomas refused to sanction the divorce of Queen Catherine and the marriage of King Henry to Aune Boleyn, for which he was beheaded in the Tower on the 6th of July, 1535. (See Campbell's Lives of the Lord Chancellors, and Froude's History of England.)