The tomb of William the Silent is an elaborate erection, of stone and marble, statuary and ornamentation.  Justice and Liberty, Religion and Valour, represented by female figures, guard the tomb.  It seems to me to lack impressiveness:  the man beneath was too fine to need all this display and talent.  More imposing is the simplicity of the monument to the great scholar near by.  Yet remembering the struggle of William the Silent against Spain and Rome, it is impossible to stand unmoved before the marble figure of the Prince, lying there for all time with his dog at his feet—­the dog who, after the noble habit of the finest of such animals, refused food and drink when his master died, and so faded away rather than owe allegiance and affection to a lesser man.

There is an eloquent Latin epitaph in gold letters on the tomb; but a better epitaph is to be found in the last sentence of Motley’s great history, perhaps the most perfect last sentence that any book ever had:  “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”.

Opposite the Old Church is the Gymnasium Publicum.  Crossing the court-yard and entering the confronting doorway, one is instantly on the very spot where William the Silent, whose tomb we have just seen, met his death on July 10th, 1584.

The Prince had been living at Delft for a while, in this house, his purpose partly being to be in the city for the christening of his son Frederick Henry.  To him on July 8th came a special messenger from the French Court with news of the death of the Duke of Anjou; the messenger, a protege of the Prince’s, according to his own story being Francis Guion, a mild and pious Protestant, whose father had been martyred as a Calvinist.  How far removed was the truth Motley shall tell:  “Francis Guion, the Calvinist, son of the martyred Calvinist, was in reality Balthazar Gerard, a fanatical Catholic, whose father and mother were still living at Villefans in Burgundy.  Before reaching man’s estate, he had formed the design of murdering the Prince of Orange, ’who, so long as he lived, seemed like to remain a rebel against the Catholic King, and to make every effort to disturb the repose of the Roman Catholic Apostolic religion’.  When but twenty years of age, he had struck his dagger with all his might into a door, exclaiming, as he did so, ’Would that the blow had been in the heart of Orange!’”

In 1582, however, the news had gone out that Jaureguy had killed the Prince at Antwerp, and Gerard felt that his mission was at an end.  But when the Prince recovered, his murderous enthusiasm redoubled, and he offered himself formally and with matter-of-fact precision to the Prince of Parma as heaven’s minister of vengeance.  The Prince, who had long been seeking such an emissary, at first declined the alliance:  he had become too much the prey of soldiers of fortune who represented themselves to