were made by the astonished party whose outrageous conduct had provoked the measure; but in three weeks’ time the whole of the republic was in perfect obedience to the authority of the stadtholder, who resumed all his functions of chief magistrate, with the additional influence which was sure to result from a vain and unjustifiable attempt to reduce his former power.  We regret to be beyond the reach of Mr. Ellis’s interesting but unpublished work, detailing the particulars of this revolution.  The former persual of a copy of it only leaves a recollection of its admirable style and the leading facts, but not of the details with sufficient accuracy to justify more than a general reference to the work itself.

By this time the discontent and agitation in Belgium had attained a most formidable height.  The attempted reformation in religion and judicial abuses persisted in by the emperor were represented, by a party whose existence was compromised by reform, as nothing less than sacrilege and tyranny, and blindly rejected by a people still totally unfitted for rational enlightenment in points of faith, or practices of civilization.  Remonstrances and strong complaints were soon succeeded by tumultuous assemblages and open insurrection.  A lawyer of Brussels, named Vander Noot, put himself at the head of the malcontents.  The states-general of Brabant declared the new measures of the emperor to be in opposition to the constitution and privileges of the country.  The other Belgian provinces soon followed this example.  The prince Albert of Saxe-Teschen, and the archduchess Maria Theresa, his wife, were at this period joint governors-general of the Austrian Netherlands.  At the burst of rebellion they attempted to temporize; but this only strengthened the revolutionary party, while the emperor wholly disapproved their measures and recalled them to Vienna.

Count Murray was now named governor-general; and it was evident that the future fate of the provinces was to depend on the issue of civil war.  Count Trautmansdorff, the imperial minister at Brussels, and General D’Alton, who commanded the Austrian troops, took a high tone, and evinced a peremptory resolution.  The soldiery and the citizens soon came into contact on many points; and blood was spilled at Brussels, Mechlin, and Antwerp.

The provincial states were convoked, for the purpose of voting the usual subsidies.  Brabant, after some opposition, consented; but the states of Hainault unanimously refused the vote.  The emperor saw, or supposed, that the necessity for decisive measures was now inevitable.  The refractory states were dissolved, and arrests and imprisonments were multiplied in all quarters.  Vander Noot, who had escaped to England, soon returned to the Netherlands, and established a committee at Breda, which conferred on him the imposing title of agent plenipotentiary of the people of Brabant.  He hoped, under this authority, to interest the English, Prussian, and Dutch governments in favor of his views; but his proposals were coldly received:  Protesiant states had little sympathy for a people whose resistance was excited, not by tyrannical efforts against freedom, but by broad measures of civil and religious reformation; the only fault of which was their attempted application to minds wholly incompetent to comprehend their value.