In the course of twenty-four hours the fleet at North Aa, instead of nine inches, had more than two feet of water.

On it went, sweeping over the broad waters. As they approached some shallows which led into the great Mere, the Zeelanders dashed into the sea, and with sheer strength shouldered every vessel through!

It was resolved that a sortie, in conjunction with the operations. of Boisot, should be made against Lammen* with the earliest dawn. Night descended upon the scene, a pitch-dark night, full of anxiety to the Spaniards, to the Armada, to Leyden. Strange sights and sounds occurred at different moments to bewilder the anxious sentinels. A long procession of lights issuing from the fort was seen to flit across the black face of the waters, in the dead of night; and the whole of the city wall between the Cowgate and the town of Burgundy fell with a loud crash. The horror-struck citizens thought that the Spaniards were upon them at last; the Spaniards imagined the noise to indicate a desperate sortie of the citizens. Everything was vague and mysterious.

Day dawned at length after the feverish night, and the admiral prepared for the assault. Within the fortress reigned a death-like stillness, which inspired a sickening suspicion. Had the city indeed been carried in the night? Had the massacre already commenced? Had all this labor and audacity been expended in vain?

Suddenly a man was descried wading breast-high through the water from Lammen towards the fleet, while at the same time one solitary boy was seen to wave his cap from the summit of the fort. After a moment of doubt, the happy mystery was solved. The Spaniards had fled panic-struck during the darkness. Their position would still have enabled them, with firmness, to frustrate the enterprise of the patriots; but the hand of God, which had sent the ocean and the tempest to the deliverance of Leyden, had struck her enemies with terror likewise.

The lights which had been seen moving during the night were the lanterns of the retreating Spaniards; and the boy who was now waving his triumphant signal from the battlements had alone witnessed the

* LAMMEN, a fort occupied by the Spaniards, which formed the sole remaining obstacle between the fleet and the city. It swarmed with soldiers and bristled with cannon; and so scrious an impediment did Boisot consider it, that he wrote that very night in desponding terms regarding it to the Prince of Orange.

spectacle.

So confident was he in the conclusion to which it led him,

that he had volunteered at daybreak to go thither alone.

The magistrates, fearing a trap, hesitated for a moment to believe the truth, which soon, however, became quite evident. Valdez,* flying himself from Leyderdorp, had ordered Colonel Borgia to retire with all his troops from Laminen.

Thus the Spaniards had retreated at the very moment that an extraordinary accident had laid bare a whole side of the city for their entrance! The noise of the wall as it fell only inspired them with fresh alarm; for they believed that the citizens had sallied forth in the darkness to aid the advancing flood in the work of destruction.

All obstacles being now removed, the fleet of Boisot swept by Lammen, and entered the city on the morning of the 3d of October. Leyden was relieved!

THE HERO OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC.

- not even Washington

No man purer patriotism than that of William of Orange.

has ever been inspired by a Whether originally of a timid temperament or not, he was certainly possessed of perfect courage at last. In siege and battle, in the deadly air of pestilential cities, in the long exhaustion of mind and body which comes from unduly protracted labor and anxiety, amid the countless conspiracies of assassins, he was daily exposed to death in every shape. Within two years five different attempts against his life had been discovered. Rank and fortune were offered to any malefactor who would compass the murder. He had already been shot through the head, and almost mortally wounded. He went through life bearing the load of a people's sorrows upon his shoulders with a smiling face. Their name was the last word upon his lips, save the simple affirmative with which the soldier who had been battling for the right all his lifetime commended his soul, in dying, "to the great Captain, Christ." The people were grateful and affectionate, for they trusted the character of their "Father William," and not all the clouds which calumny could collect ever dimmed to their eyes the radiance of that lofty mind to which they were accustomed, in their darkest calamities, to look for light. As long as he lived he was the guiding-star of a whole brave nation, and when he died the little children cried in the streets.

* VALDEZ, the Spanish commander. His head-quarters were at Leyderdorp, a mile and a half to the right of Lammen.

FROUDE.

1818

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, the historian, was born in Devonshire, England, in 1818. He graduated at Oxford University, and became a Fellow of Exeter College. His first book was a novel, The Shadows of the Clouds, which had much merit, but is now forgotten. His second was The Nemesis of Faith, a theological work which attracted much attention. But his third essay, in the field of history, was conspicuously successful. His History of England embraces the period between the Fall of Wolsey and the Death of Elizabeth, and furnishes the completest view of that time that has ever been written. In its preparation the author availed himself of a large collection of manuscripts never before discovered, and which threw a strong light upon his subject. Mr. Froude is not absolutely impartial as an historian; he often gives way to his prejudices, and seems to pervert testimony in aid of his own opinions. His treatment of the case of Mary Queen of Scots has been shown to be thoroughly unjust. But he has admirable qualifications for historical writing; his philosophical reflections are judicious, and his style is spirited and forcible. Some of his dramatic passages are equal to any in our historical literature. Although best known, in this country, at least, by his History, Mr. Froude has written many able essays on moral, social, and educational topics, some of which have been collected in a volume entitled Short Studies on Great Subjects, from which the second extract is taken. He is now engaged on a book entitled The English in Ireland, the first volume of which has been published. In 1872 Mr. Froude visited this country on a lecturing tour, and was received with marked cordiality.

EXECUTION OF SIR THOMAS MORE.*

Ar daybreak More was awoke by the entrance of Sir Thomas Pope, who had come to confirm his anticipations, and to tell him it was the king's pleasure that he should suffer at nine o'clock that morning. He received the news with utter composure. I am much bounden to the king," he said, "for the benefits and honors he has bestowed on me; and, so help me God, most of all I am bounden to him that it pleaseth his Majesty to rid me so shortly out of the miseries of this present world.”

Pope told him the king desired that he would not " use many words on the scaffold." "Mr. Pope," he answered, "you do well to give me warning, for otherwise I had purposed somewhat to have spoken; but no matter wherewith his Grace should have cause to be offended.

* SIR THOMAS MORE, a celebrated English philosopher and statesman, born in London in 1480. He was the author of the famous Utopia, a fanciful production written in Latin, describing an imaginary commonwealth in the imaginary island of Utopia, the citizens of which had all things in common. He was a strong Roman Catholic, and wrote tracts against Luther. In October, 1529, he was appointed Lord Chancellor by Henry VIII. in place of the famous Cardinal Wolsey (see extract from Shakespeare's King Henry the Eighth, page 5). Sir Thomas refused to sanction the divorce of Queen Catherine and the marriage of King Henry to Anne Boleyn, for which he was beheaded in the Tower on the 6th of July, 1535. (See Campbell's Lives of the Lord Chancellors, and Froule's History of Englan l.)

Howbeit, whatever I intended, I shall obey his Highness's command."

He afterwards discussed the arrangements for the funeral, at which he begged that his family might be present; and when all was settled, Pope rose to leave him. He was an old friend. He took More's hand and wrung it, and, quite overcome, burst into tears.

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"Quiet yourself, Mr. Pope," More said, "and be not discomfited, for I trust we shall once see each other full merrily, when we shall live and love together in eternal bliss."

As soon as he was alone he dressed in his most elaborate costume. It was for the benefit, he said, of the executioner who was to do him so great a service.* Sir William Kingston remonstrated, and with some difficulty induced him to put on a plainer suit; but that his intended liberality should not fail, he sent the man a gold angel in compensation, “as a token that he maliced him nothing, but rather loved him extremely."

So about nine of the clock he was brought by the Lieutenant out of the Tower; his beard being long, which fashion he had never before used, his face pale and lean, carrying in his hands a red cross, casting his eyes often towards heaven. He had been unpopular as a judge, and one or two persons in the crowd were insolent to him; but the distance was short and soon over, as all else was nearly over now.

The scaffold had been awkwardly erected, and shook as he placed his foot upon the ladder. "See me safe up," he said to Kingston. "For my coming down I can shift for myself." He began to speak to the people, but the sheriff begged him not to proceed, and he contented himself with asking for their prayers, and desiring them to bear witness for him that he died in the faith of the holy Catholic Church, and a faithful servant of God and the king. He then repeated the Miserere psalm† on his knees; and when he had ended and had risen, the executioner, with an emotion which promised ill for the manner in which his part in the tragedy would be accomplished, begged his forgiveness. More kissed him. More kissed him. "Thou art to do me the greatest benefit that I can receive," he said. Pluck up thy spirit, man,

Take

and be not afraid to do thine office. My neck is very short. heed, therefore, that thou strike not awry for saving of thine honesty." The executioner offered to tie his eyes. 'I will cover them myself,"

*The executioner received the clothes worn by the sufferer. † Psalm li.

he said; and binding them in a cloth which he had brought with him, he knelt, and laid his head upon the block. The fatal stroke was about to fall, when he signed for a moment's delay while he moved aside his beard. "Pity that should be cut," he murmured, With which strange words, the

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that has not committed treason."

strangest, perhaps, ever uttered at such a time, the lips most famous through Europe for eloquence and wisdom closed forever.

"So," concludes his biographer, "with alacrity and spiritual joy he received the fatal ax, which no sooner had severed the head from the body, but his soul was carried by angels into everlasting glory, where a crown of martyrdom was placed upon him which can never fade nor decay; and then he found those words true which he had often spoken, that a man may lose his head and have no harm."

This was the execution of Sir Thomas More, an act which sounded out into the far corners of the earth, and was the world's wonder as well for the circumstances under which it was perpetrated, as for the preternatural composure with which it was borne. Something of his calmness may have been due to his natural temperament, something to an unaffected weariness of a world which in his eyes was plunging into the ruin of the latter days. But those fair hues of sunny cheerfulness caught their color from the simplicity of his faith; and never was there a Christian's victory over death more grandly evidenced than in that last scene lighted with its lambent humor.

THE BOOK OF JOB.

WITH the Book of Job analytical criticism has only served to clear up the uncertainties which have hitherto always hung about it. It is now considered to be beyond all doubt a genuine Hebrew original, completed by its writer almost in the form in which it now remains to us. It is the most difficult of all the Hebrew compositions, - many words occurring in it, and many thoughts, not to be found elsewhere in the Bible. How difficult our translators found it may be seen by the number of words which they were obliged to insert in italics, and the doubtful renderings which they have suggested in the margin. There are many mythical and physical allusions scattered over the poem, which, in the sixteenth century, there were positively no means of understanding; and perhaps, too, there were mental tendencies in the translators themselves which prevented them from adequately apprehending even the drift and spirit of the composition.