Perhaps there are not to be found in the historian’s works more striking passages than those in which are described the last days of Philip the Second. To Philip’s fortitude, in agony as poignant as any he had visited upon his miserable victims, the historian gives unstinted praise. The account, which rests upon documentary basis, presents an accumulation of horrors from which a Zola or a Flaubert might have learned a lesson. The king died with a clear conscience, having upon his soul the blood of uncounted numbers of human beings, and providing in his will that ‘thirty thousand masses should be said for his soul.’ ‘It seems like mere railing to specify his crimes,’ says Motley. ‘The horrible monotony of his career stupefies the mind until it is ready to accept the principle of evil as the fundamental law of the land.’ Motley’s conclusion is that Philip the Second of Spain was Machiavelli’s greatest pupil. What remains of the book after Philip’s death lacks neither literary interest nor historic value. But we have something akin to the feeling which comes over us when the chief character in a play dies before the last act; we question for a moment whether the interest will hold. That dominant and sinister personality leaves a void which the exploits of Prince Maurice hardly serve to fill. With these exploits, however, and a discussion of the causes leading to the Twelve Years’ Truce, Motley concluded the _History of the United Netherlands_. In the last of his three great works, _John of Barneveld_, Motley gave full expression to his generous partisanship of all that seemed to him to stand for the spirit of liberty. With a contempt for the subtleties of theological speculation, the historian was by instinct ‘Remonstrant,’ that is, anti-Calvinistic, and found in Barneveld one of his heroes. He has painted a wonderful picture of the old advocate’s trial and death. Hounded daily by twenty-four judges, many of them his personal enemies, compelled to rely on his powerful memory in reviewing the events and explaining the acts of his forty-three years of public service, denied books, denied counsel, denied a knowledge in advance of the charges made against him, denied access to the notes of his examination as it proceeded, denied everything suggested by the words ‘law’ and ‘justice,’ Barneveld came out of the ordeal so triumphantly that the announcement of his sentence might well have moved him to say: ‘I am ready enough to die, but I cannot comprehend why I am to die.’ In characterization of men, in searching analysis of causes and motives, in brilliant description, and in manly eloquence, Motley’s _John of Barneveld_ equals its predecessors, while the note of passion is if anything intensified by the bitter experiences through which the historian had so recently passed. * * * * *