against him.  He had, it was said, neglected his native land for his new kingdom.  Whenever the dignity of the English flag, whenever the prosperity of the English trade was concerned, he forgot that he was a Hollander.  But, as soon as his well remembered face was again seen, all jealousy, all coldness, was at an end.  There was not a boor, not a fisherman, not an artisan, in the crowds which lined the road from Honslaerdyk to the Hague, whose heart did not swell with pride at the thought that the first minister of Holland had become a great King, had freed the English, and had conquered the Irish.  It would have been madness in William to travel from Hampton Court to Westminster without a guard; but in his own land he needed no swords or carbines to defend him.  “Do not keep the people off;” he cried:  “let them come close to me; they are all my good friends.”  He soon learned that sumptuous preparations were making for his entrance into the Hague.  At first he murmured and objected.  He detested, he said, noise and display.  The necessary cost of the war was quite heavy enough.  He hoped that his kind fellow townsmen would consider him as a neighbour, born and bred among them, and would not pay him so bad a compliment as to treat him ceremoniously.  But all his expostulations were vain.  The Hollanders, simple and parsimonious as their ordinary habits were, had set their hearts on giving their illustrious countryman a reception suited to his dignity and to his merit; and he found it necessary to yield.  On the day of his triumph the concourse was immense.  All the wheeled carriages and horses of the province were too few for the multitude of those who flocked to the show.  Many thousands came sliding or skating along the frozen canals from Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Leyden, Haarlem, Delft.  At ten in the morning of the twenty-sixth of January, the great bell of the Town House gave the signal.  Sixteen hundred substantial burghers, well armed, and clad in the finest dresses which were to be found in the recesses of their wardrobes, kept order in the crowded streets.  Balconies and scaffolds, embowered in evergreens and hung with tapestry, hid the windows.  The royal coach, escorted by an army of halberdiers and running footmen, and followed by a long train of splendid equipages, passed under numerous arches rich with carving and painting, amidst incessant shouts of “Long live the King our Stadtholder.”  The front of the Town House and the whole circuit of the marketplace were in a blaze with brilliant colours.  Civic crowns, trophies, emblems of arts, of sciences, of commerce and of agriculture, appeared every where.  In one place William saw portrayed the glorious actions of his ancestors.  There was the silent prince, the founder of the Batavian commonwealth, passing the Meuse with his warriors.  There was the more impetuous Maurice leading the charge at Nieuport.  A little further on, the hero might retrace the eventful story of his own life.  He