lofty nature of Orange was easily effaced in Spain by court flattery and by royal bribes.  Notwithstanding the coldness, the rebuffs, and the repeated warnings which might have saved him from destruction, nothing could turn him at last from the fanatic loyalty towards which, after much wavering, his mind irrevocably pointed.  His voluntary humiliation as a general, a grandee, a Fleming, and a Christian before the insolent Alva upon his first arrival, would move our contempt were it not for the gentler emotions suggested by the infatuated nobleman’s doom.  Upon the departure of Orange, Egmont was only too eager to be employed by Philip in any work which the monarch could find for him to do.  Yet this was the man whom Philip chose, through the executioner’s sword, to convert into a popular idol, and whom Poetry has loved to contemplate as a romantic champion of freedom.

As for Horn, details enough have likewise been given of his career to enable the reader thoroughly to understand the man.  He was a person of mediocre abilities and thoroughly commonplace character.  His high rank and his tragic fate are all which make him interesting.  He had little love for court or people.  Broken in fortunes, he passed his time mainly in brooding over the ingratitude of Charles and Philip, and in complaining bitterly of the disappointments to which their policy had doomed him.  He cared nothing for Cardinalists or confederates.  He disliked Brederode, he detested Granvelle.  Gloomy and morose, he went to bed, while the men who were called his fellow-conspirators were dining and making merry in the same house with himself:  He had as little sympathy with the cry of “Vivent les gueux” as for that of “Vive le Roy.”  The most interesting features in his character are his generosity toward his absent brother and the manliness with which, as Montigny’s representative at Tournay, he chose rather to confront the anger of the government, and to incur the deadly revenge of Philip, than make himself the executioner of the harmless Christians in Tournay.  In this regard, his conduct is vastly more entitled to our respect than that of Egmont, and he was certainly more deserving of reverence from the people, even though deserted by all men while living, and left headless and solitary in his coffin at Saint Gudule.

The hatred for Alva, which sprang from the graves of these illustrious victims, waxed daily more intense.  “Like things of another world,” wrote Hoogstraaten, “seem the cries, lamentations, and just compassion which all the inhabitants of Brussels, noble or ignoble, feel for such barbarous tyranny, while this Nero of an Alva is boasting that he will do the same to all whom he lays his hands upon.”  No man believed that the two nobles had committed a crime, and many were even disposed to acquit Philip of his share in the judicial murder.  The people ascribed the execution solely to the personal jealousy of the Duke.  They discoursed to each other not