hand was offered to all.  There were none so humble as to be forbidden to approach him, none so ignorant as not to know his deeds.  All knew that to combat in their cause he had descended from princely station, from luxurious ease, to the position of a proscribed and almost beggared outlaw.  For them he had impoverished himself and his family, mortgaged his estates, stripped himself of jewels, furniture, almost of food and raiment.  Through his exertions the Spaniards had been banished from their little territory, the Inquisition crushed within their borders, nearly all the sister provinces but yesterday banded into a common cause.

He found time, notwithstanding congratulating crowds who thronged his footsteps, to direct the labors of the states-general, who still looked more than ever to his guidance, as their relations with Don John became more complicated and unsatisfactory.  In a letter addressed to them, on the 20th of June from Harlem, he warned them most eloquently to hold to the Ghent Pacification as to their anchor in the storm.  He assured them, if it was, torn from them, that their destruction was inevitable.  He reminded them that hitherto they had got but the shadow, not the substance of the Treaty; that they had been robbed of that which was to have been its chief fruit—­union among themselves.  He and his brothers, with their labor, their wealth, and their blood, had laid down the bridge over which the country had stepped to the Pacification of Ghent.  It was for the nation to maintain what had been so painfully won; yet he proclaimed to them that the government were not acting in good faith, that secret, preparations were making to annihilate the authority of the states; to restore the edicts, to put strangers into high places, and to set up again the scaffold and the whole machinery of persecution.

In consequence of the seizure of Namur Castle, and the accusations made by Don John against Orange, in order to justify that act, the Prince had already despatched Taffin and Saint Aldegonde to the states-general with a commission to declare his sentiments upon the subject.  He addressed, moreover, to the same body a letter full of sincere and simple eloquence.  “The Seigneur Don John,” said he, “has accused me of violating the peace, and of countenancing attempts against his life, and in endeavouring to persuade you into joining him in a declaration of war against me and against Holland and Zealand; but I pray you, most affectionately, to remember our mutual and solemn obligations to maintain the treaty of Ghent.”  He entreated the states, therefore, to beware of the artifices employed to seduce them from the only path which led to the tranquillity of their common country, and her true splendor and prosperity.  “I believe there is not one of you,” he continued, “who can doubt me, if he will weigh carefully all my actions, and consider closely the course which I am pursuing and have always pursued.  Let all these be confronted with the conduct of Don John,