“Quis his sepultus, quæris, ipse edisseram Nuper locutus et stylo et linguâ fui Nunc alteri licebit. _Ego sum Lipsius_ _Cui litteræ dant nomen et tuus favor_; Sed nomen, ipse abivi, abibit hoc quoque; Et nihil his orbis quod perennet possidet. Vis altiori voce me tecum loqui? Humana cuncta fumus, umbra, vanitas Et scenæ imago, et, verbo ut absolvam, NIHIL Extremum hoc te alloquor Æternum ut gaudeam tu apprecare.” Lipsius, as a scholar, was the rival of Scaliger; he was successively a Roman Catholic, a Lutheran, and a reformed Protestant, and after publishing an exhortation to persecution, died in 1606, in the bosom of Rome with “_ure et seca!_” upon his lips. Strange that the same spirit which could prescribe fire and faggots for its fellow-men, should have lavished all its fondness upon flowers and favourite dogs, whom Lipsius has immortalized in his odes and epitaphs! Rubens has introduced the portrait of Lipsius into his picture of the philosophers along with that of Hugo Grotius, Rubens himself and his brother, with his faithful Saphir fawning at his knee, and behind him a _tulip_, emblematic of his love for flowers, placed beside a bust of Cicero; his comments upon whom, written at the age of nineteen, introduced Lipsius to the notice and patronage of the Cardinal Granvelle. It was at Louvain that the Belgian troops, under their new King, achieved, in 1832, their ludicrous flight before the Prince of Orange, which fully vindicated for them the soubriquet of the “Braves Belges,” which they had acquired years before by their cowardly pusillanimity at Quatre Bras and Waterloo. A few days before the affair at Louvain, they had made a similar pitiful exhibition at Hasselt, where they fled in terror on the approach of the Dutch, and yet two years before, the Dutch were utterly unable to make head against the Belgians, either at Brussels, Ghent, or Antwerp! The bravery of the Belgians is, indeed, become a past tradition. Cæsar accords them credit of being the most gallant soldiers, whom he encountered in Gaul, “_horum omnium fortissimi sunt Belgæ_,” and Florus ascribes to them the honour of turning the fortune of the day at Pharsalia. These titles they have long since, however, resigned; the last fire of their gallantry seems to have burned out under the Arteveldes and John Hyoens, in the wars of the “Fullers and Weavers;” for in the troubles of the Spanish persecution, the military renown of the patriots belongs almost exclusively to the soldiers of “Father William,” as the Prince of Orange is still affectionately styled. The Flemings were anxious enough, in the first instance, to fly to arms when the Duke of Alva was wringing from them his iniquitous taxes, but so soon as these were repealed, they were quite contented to leave the Dutch all the glory of their liberation. Years of repose and peace under Austria, and an addiction to agriculture and commerce, appear to have effaced even