a boat, were eagerly seized upon.  Every house was inundated; even the grave-yards gave up their dead.  The living infant in his cradle, and the long-buried corpse in his coffin, floated side by side.  The ancient flood seemed about to be renewed.  Everywhere, upon the top of trees, upon the steeples of churches, human beings were clustered, praying to God for mercy, and to their fellow-men for assistance.  As the storm at last was subsiding, boats began to ply in every direction, saving those who were still struggling in the water, picking fugitives from roofs and tree-tops, and collecting the bodies of those already drowned.  Colonel Robles, Seigneur de Billy, formerly much hated for his Spanish or Portuguese blood, made himself very active in this humane work.  By his exertions, and those of the troops belonging to Groningen, many lives were rescued, and gratitude replaced the ancient animosity.  It was estimated that at least twenty thousand persons were destroyed in the province of Friesland alone.  Throughout the Netherlands, one hundred thousand persons perished.  The damage alone to property, the number of animals engulfed in the sea, were almost incalculable.

These events took place on the 1st and 2nd November, 1570.  The former happened to be the day of All Saints, and the Spaniards maintained loudly that the vengeance of Heaven had descended upon the abode of heretics.  The Netherlanders looked upon the catastrophe as ominous of still more terrible misfortunes in store for them.  They seemed doomed to destruction by God and man.  An overwhelming tyranny had long been chafing against their constitutional bulwarks, only to sweep over them at last; and now the resistless ocean, impatient of man’s feeble barriers, had at last risen to reclaim his prey.  Nature, as if disposed to put to the blush the feeble cruelty of man, had thus wrought more havoc in a few hours, than bigotry, however active, could effect in many years.

Nearly at the close of this year (1570) an incident occurred, illustrating the ferocious courage so often engendered in civil contests.  On the western verge of the Isle of Bommel, stood the castle of Lowestein.  The island is not in the sea.  It is the narrow but important territory which is enclosed between the Meuse and the Waal.  The castle, placed in a slender hook, at the junction of the two rivers, commanded the two cities of Gorcum and Dorcum, and the whole navigation of the waters.  One evening, towards the end of December, four monks, wearing the cowls and robes of Mendicant Grey Friars, demanded hospitality at the castle gate.  They were at once ushered into the presence of the commandant, a brother of President Tisnacq.  He was standing by the fire, conversing with his wife.  The foremost monk approaching him, asked whether the castle held for the Duke of Alva or the Prince of Orange.  The castellian replied that he recognized no prince save Philip, King of Spain.  Thereupon the monk, who