offered to support their women and those who were unserviceable for war, they replied in a similar tone, that no wealth should bribe them to be accessory to the enslaving of Greece; and that to avenge the insulted honour of their gods was a sacred duty: they declined, though with thanks, the offer of assistance to support their families, and only requested, that since their reply would unquestionably produce an immediate invasion, the Lacedæmonians would be ready at the first notice to march into Bœotia, and save them, if possible, from being again obliged to abandon their country.[58] In return for this devotion, the Spartans, as before, suffered Mardonius unopposed to occupy Attica, and, unmoved by the pressing entreaties of the Athenians, they remained at home, until it was suggested that to fortify the Isthmus would be of little use, if the sea were left free to the barbarians by the defection of the better half of the Grecian fleet. This observation produced immediate effect, and an army of 5000 Spartans and 35,000 Helots was instantly despatched, though not until the Persian invasion had again compelled the Athenians to remove their families and effects to Salamis. Mardonius, finding the Athenians immovable, burnt the city, which he had hitherto spared, and retreated into Bœotia, as offering a better field for the evolutions of his cavalry. There this eventful war was closed by the glorious victory of Platæa. But it is not to Salamis and to Platæa that we wish especially to direct the reader’s admiration, for military virtue is a plant of hardy and extensive growth. It is the spectacle of a nation once and again quitting an endeared home (and there is much of misery comprised in these few words) in preference to owning a foreign master; and persevering in its exalted course, unchanged even by the ingratitude and injustice of those countrymen for whose welfare, conjointly with its own liberty, it rejected the most tempting offers of wealth and security, to which we look as the best justification of those high–flown eulogiums which the later Athenians bestowed so liberally upon their ancestors. In seeking for a parallel case in modern history, the conflagration of Moscow at once suggests itself; but the obscurity which involves the origin of that remarkable and important event renders it impossible to determine how far the same spirit prompted the one and the other sacrifice; and the recent occurrence and notoriety of the latter furnishes an additional reason for passing it over. In its place, therefore, we shall select the most striking incident, perhaps, in the long and glorious war waged by the Low Countries for the recovery of their liberties:—the siege of Leyden, in the year 1574, when the Dutch, in greater straits than the Athenians, and unable either to defend or abandon their country, called in the powers of nature to their assistance, and sank it under the waters, rather than surrender its strongholds to the Spanish tyrant.