crisis, the name of constitutional government is but a mockery.  Many of the royalist nobles united for the national cause; and even the stadtholderess joined her efforts to theirs, for an object which would relieve her from the tyranny which none felt more than she did.  Those who composed this confederacy against the minister were actuated by a great variety of motives.  The duchess of Parma hated him, as a domestic spy robbing her of all real authority; the royalist nobles, as an insolent upstart at every instant mortifying their pride.  The counts Egmont and Horn, with nobler sentiments, opposed him as the author of their country’s growing misfortunes.  But it is doubtful if any of the confederates except the Prince of Orange clearly saw that they were putting themselves in direct and personal opposition to the king himself.  William alone, clear-sighted in politics and profound in his views, knew, in thus devoting himself to the public cause, the adversary with whom he entered the lists.

This great man, for whom the national traditions still preserve the sacred title of “father” (Vader-Willem), and who was in truth not merely the parent but the political creator of the country, was at this period in his thirtieth year.  He already joined the vigor of manhood to the wisdom of age.  Brought up under the eye of Charles V., whose sagacity soon discovered his precocious talents, he was admitted to the councils of the emperor at a time of life which was little advanced beyond mere boyhood.  He alone was chosen by this powerful sovereign to be present at the audiences which he gave to foreign ambassadors, which proves that in early youth he well deserved by his discretion the surname of “the taciturn.”  It was on the arm of William, then twenty years of age, and already named by him to the command of the Belgian troops, that this powerful monarch leaned for support on the memorable day of his abdication; and he immediately afterward employed him on the important mission of bearing the imperial crown to his brother Ferdinand, in whose favor he had resigned it.  William’s grateful attachment to Charles did not blind him to the demerits of Philip.  He repaired to France, as one of the hostages on the part of the latter monarch for the fulfilment of the peace of Cateau-Cambresis; and he then learned from the lips of Henry II., who soon conceived a high esteem for him, the measures reciprocally agreed on by the two sovereigns for the oppression of their subjects.  From that moment his mind was made up on the character of Philip, and on the part which he had himself to perform; and he never felt a doubt on the first point, nor swerved from the latter.