they had expected.  It had been supposed that in an hour the party would be on shore.  But great masses of floating ice impeded the progress of the skiff; the night came on; the fog grew thicker; the waves broke over the King and the courtiers.  Once the keel struck on a sand bank, and was with great difficulty got off.  The hardiest mariners showed some signs of uneasiness.  But William, through the whole night, was as composed as if he had been in the drawingroom at Kensington.  “For shame,” he said to one of the dismayed sailors “are you afraid to die in my company?” A bold Dutch seaman ventured to spring out, and, with great difficulty, swam and scrambled through breakers, ice and mud, to firm ground.  Here he discharged a musket and lighted a fire as a signal that he was safe.  None of his fellow passengers, however, thought it prudent to follow his example.  They lay tossing in sight of the flame which he had kindled, till the first pale light of a January morning showed them that they were close to the island of Goree.  The King and his Lords, stiff with cold and covered with icicles, gladly landed to warm and rest themselves.1

After reposing some hours in the hut of a peasant, William proceeded to the Hague.  He was impatiently expected there for, though the fleet which brought him was not visible from the shore, the royal salutes had been heard through the mist, and had apprised the whole coast of his arrival.  Thousands had assembled at Honslaerdyk to welcome him with applause which came from their hearts and which went to his heart.  That was one of the few white days of a life, beneficent indeed and glorious, but far from happy.  After more than two years passed in a strange land, the exile had again set foot on his native soil.  He heard again the language of his nursery.  He saw again the scenery and the architecture which were inseparably associated in his mind with the recollections of childhood and the sacred feeling of home; the dreary mounds of sand, shells and weeds, on which the waves of the German Ocean broke; the interminable meadows intersected by trenches; the straight canals; the villas bright with paint and adorned with quaint images and inscriptions.  He had lived during many weary months among a people who did not love him, who did not understand him, who could never forget that he was a foreigner.  Those Englishmen who served him most faithfully served him without enthusiasm, without personal attachment, and merely from a sense of public duty.  In their hearts they were sorry that they had no choice but between an English tyrant and a Dutch deliverer.  All was now changed.  William was among a population by which he was adored, as Elizabeth had been adored when she rode through her army at Tilbury, as Charles the Second had been adored when he landed at Dover.  It is true that the old enemies of the House of Orange had not been inactive during the absence of the Stadtholder.  There had been, not indeed clamours, but mutterings