its own excesses had made more powerful, that its name was already becoming a bye-word.  It now, most fatally and for ever, was to misunderstand its true position.  The Prince of Orange, the great architect of his country’s fortunes, would have made it the keystone of the arch which he was laboring to construct.  Had he been allowed to perfect his plan, the structure might have endured for ages, a perpetual bulwark against, tyranny and wrong.  The temporary and slender frame by which the great artist had supported his arch while still unfinished, was plucked away by rude and ribald hands; the keystone plunged into the abyss, to be lost for ever, and the great work of Orange remained a fragment from its commencement.  The acts of demagogues, the conservative disgust at licence, the jealousy of rival nobles, the venality of military leaders, threw daily fresh stumbling-blocks in his heroic path.  It was not six months after the advent of Farnese to power, before that bold and subtle chieftain had seized the double-edged sword of religious dissension as firmly as he had grasped his celebrated brand when he boarded the galley of Muatapha Bey, and the Netherlands were cut in twain, to be re-united nevermore.  The separate treaty of the Walloon provinces was soon destined to separate the Celtic and Romanesque elements from the Batavian and Frisian portion of a nationality, which; thoroughly fused in all its parts, would have formed as admirable a compound of fire and endurance as history has ever seen.

Meantime, the grass was growing and the cattle were grazing in the streets of Ghent, where once the tramp of workmen going to and from their labor was like the movement of a mighty army.  The great majority of the burghers were of the Reformed religion, and disposed to make effectual resistance to the Malcontents, led by the disaffected nobles.  The city, considering itself the natural head of all the southern country, was indignant that the Walloon provinces should dare to reassert that supremacy of Romanism which had been so effectually suppressed, and to admit the possibility of friendly relations with a sovereign who had been virtually disowned.  There were two parties, however, in Ghent.  Both were led by men of abandoned and dangerous character.  Imbize, the worse of the two demagogues, was inconstant, cruel, cowardly, and treacherous, but possessed of eloquence and a talent for intrigue.  Ryhove was a bolder ruffian—­wrathful, bitter, and unscrupulous.  Imbize was at the time opposed to Orange, disliking his moderation, and trembling at his firmness.  Ryhove considered himself the friend of the Prince.  We have seen that he had consulted him previously to his memorable attack upon Aerschot, in the autumn of the preceding year, and we know the result of that conference.