Whoever would really enjoy the spirit of historical details should never omit an opportunity of seeing places rendered memorable by associations connected with the deeds, and especially with the death, of great men; the spot, for instance, where William was assassinated at Delft; the old staircase he was just on the point of ascending; the narrow pass between that and the dining-hall whence he came out, of scarcely sufficient extent for the murderer to held forth his arm and his pistol, two and a half feet long.  This weapon, and its fellow, are both preserved in the museum of The Hague, together with two of the fatal bullets, and the very clothes which the victim wore.  The leathern doublet, pierced by the balls and burned by the powder, lies beside the other parts of the dress, the simple gravity of which, in fashion and color, irresistibly brings the wise, great man before us, and adds a hundred-fold to the interest excited by a recital of his murder.

There is but one important feature in the character of William which we have hitherto left untouched, but which the circumstances of his death seemed to sanctify, and point out for record in the same page with it.  We mean his religious opinions; and we shall despatch a subject which is, in regard to all men, so delicate, indeed so sacred, in a few words.  He was born a Lutheran.  When he arrived, a boy, at the court of Charles V., he was initiated into the Catholic creed, in which he was thenceforward brought up.  Afterward, when he could think for himself and choose his profession of faith, he embraced the doctrine of Calvin.  His whole public conduct seems to prove that he viewed sectarian principles chiefly in the light of political instruments; and that, himself a conscientious Christian, in the broad sense of the term, he was deeply imbued with the spirit of universal toleration, and considered the various shades of belief as subservient to the one grand principle of civil and religious liberty, for which he had long devoted and at length laid down his life.  His assassin was taken alive, and four days afterward executed with terrible circumstances of cruelty, which he bore as a martyr might have borne them.  He was a native of Burgundy, and had for some months lingered near his victim, and insinuated himself into his confidence by a feigned attachment to liberty, and an apparent zeal for the reformed faith.  He was nevertheless a bigoted Catholic and, by his own confession, he had communicated his design to, and received encouragement to its execution from, more than one minister of the sect to which he belonged.  But his avowal criminated a more important accomplice, and one whose character stands so high in history that it behooves us to examine thoroughly the truth of the accusation, and the nature of the collateral proofs by which it is supported.  Most writers on this question have leaned to the side which all would wish to adopt, for the honor of human nature and the integrity of a celebrated name.  But an