Delft was a place of early importance in the United Provinces, being one of the six original cities, that sent Deputies to the States of the province; a privilege, which, at the instance of their glorious WILLIAM the First of ORANGE, was afterwards properly extended to twelve others, including Rotterdam and the Brill. Yet it is little celebrated for military events, being unfortified, and having probably always obeyed the fortune of the neighbouring places. The circumstance which gives it a melancholy place in history, is the murder of the wife and beneficent Prince who founded the republic. His palace, a plain brick building, is still in good repair, where strangers are always shewn the staircase on which he fell, and the holes made in the wall by the shot that killed him. The old man, who keeps the house, told the story with as much agitation and interest as if it had happened yesterday. "The Prince and Princess came out of that chamber--there stood the Prince, here stood the murderer; when the Prince stepped here to speak to him about the passport, the villain fired, and the Prince fell all along here and died. Yes, so it was--there are the holes the balls made." Over one of these, which is large enough to admit two fingers, is this inscription: "_Hier onder staen de Teykenen der Kooglen daar meede Prins Willem van Orange is doorschootten op_ 10 July, A. 1584." To this detestable action the assassin acknowledged himself to have been instigated by the proclamation of Philip the Second, offering a reward for its perpetration. The Princess, who had the wretchedness to witness it, had lost her father and her former husband in the massacre of St. Bartholomew in France, which, though contrived by Catherine and Charles the Ninth of that country, is believed to have been the consequence of their interview at Bayonne, with Isabella, the wife of the same Philip. The melancholy excited on this spot is continued by passing from it to the tomb of WILLIAM, in the great church, called the _Nieuwe Kerk_. There the gloomy pageantry of the black escutcheons, above a choir, silent, empty and vast, and the withering remains of colours, won by hands long since gone to their decay, prolong the consideration of the transientness of human worth and happiness, which can so easily be destroyed by the command, or the hand of human villainy.