the master-minds of his century, had there been no other monument to his memory than the remains of his spoken or written eloquence.  The bulk of his performances in this department was prodigious.  Not even Philip was more industrious in the cabinet.  Not even Granvelle held a more facile pen.  He wrote and spoke equally well in French German, or Flemish; and he possessed, besides; Spanish, Italian, Latin.  The weight of his correspondence alone would have almost sufficed for the common industry of a lifetime, and although many volumes of his speeches and, letters have been published, there remain in the various archives of the Netherlands and Germany many documents from his hand which will probably never see the light.  If the capacity for unremitted intellectual labor in an honorable cause be the measure of human greatness, few minds could be compared to the “large composition” of this man.  The efforts made to destroy the Netherlands by the most laborious and painstaking of tyrants were counteracted by the industry of the most indefatigable of patriots.

Thus his eloquence, oral or written, gave him almost boundless power over his countrymen.  He possessed, also, a rare perception of human character, together with an iron memory which never lost a face, a place, or an event, once seen or known.  He read the minds even the faces of men, like printed books.  No man could overreach him, excepting only those to whom he gave his heart.  He might be mistaken where he had confided, never where he had been distrustful or indifferent.  He was deceived by Renneberg, by his brother-in-law Van den Berg, by the Duke of Anjou.  Had it been possible for his brother Louis or his brother John to have proved false, he might have been deceived by them.  He was never outwitted by Philip, or Granvelle, or Don John, or Alexander of Parma.  Anna of Saxony was false to him; and entered into correspondence with the royal governors and with the King of Spain; Charlotte of Bourbon or Louisa de Coligny might have done the same had it been possible for their natures also to descend to such depths of guile.

As for the Aerschots, the Havres, the Chimays, he was never influenced either by their blandishments or their plots.  He was willing to use them when their interest made them friendly, or to crush them when their intrigues against his policy rendered them dangerous.  The adroitness with which he converted their schemes in behalf of Matthias, of Don John, of Anjou, into so many additional weapons for his own cause, can never be too often studied.  It is instructive to observe the wiles of the Macchiavelian school employed by a master of the craft, to frustrate, not to advance, a knavish purpose.  This character, in a great measure, marked his whole policy.  He was profoundly skilled in the subtleties of Italian statesmanship, which he had learned as a youth at the Imperial court, and which he employed in his manhood in the service, not of tyranny, but of liberty.  He fought the Inquisition with its own weapons.  He dealt with Philip on his own ground.  He excavated the earth beneath the King’s feet by a more subtle process than that practised by the most fraudulent monarch that ever governed the Spanish empire, and Philip, chain-mailed as he was in complicated wiles, was pierced to the quick by a keener policy than his own.