All Brussels thronged around the scaffold, and the fatal blow seemed to fall on every heart. Loud sobs alone broke the appalling silence. The duke himself, who watched the execution from a window of the townhouse, wiped his eyes as his victim died. Shortly afterwards Count Horn advanced on the scaffold. Of a more violent temperament than his friend, and stimulated by stronger reasons for hatred against the king, he had received the sentence with less composure, although in his case, perhaps, it was less unjust. He burst forth in bitter reproaches against the king, and the bishop with difficulty prevailed upon him to make a better use of his last moments than to abuse them in imprecations on his enemies. At last, however, he became more collected, and made his confession to the bishop, which at first he was disposed to refuse. He mounted the scaffold with the same attendants as his friend. In passing he saluted many of his acquaintances; his hands were, like Egmont’s, free, and he was dressed in a black doublet and cloak, with a Milan cap of the same color upon his head. When he had ascended, he cast his eyes upon the corpse, which lay under the cloth, and asked one of the bystanders if it was the body of his friend. On being answered in the affirmative, he said some words in Spanish, threw his cloak from him, and knelt upon the cushion. All shrieked aloud as he received the fatal blow. The heads of both were fixed upon the poles which were set up on the scaffold, where they remained until past three in the afternoon, when they were taken down, and, with the two bodies, placed in leaden coffins and deposited in a vault. In spite of the number of spies and executioners who surrounded the scaffold, the citizens of Brussels would not be prevented from dipping their handkerchiefs in the streaming blood, and carrying home with them these precious memorials. SIEGE OF ANTWERP BY THE PRINCE OF PARMA, IN THE YEARS 1584 AND 1585. It is an interesting spectacle to observe the struggle of man’s inventive genius in conflict with powerful opposing elements, and to see the difficulties which are insurmountable to ordinary capacities overcome by prudence, resolution, and a determined will. Less attractive, but only the more instructive, perhaps, is the contrary spectacle, where the absence of those qualities renders all efforts of genius vain, throws away all the favors of fortune, and where inability to improve such advantages renders hopeless a success which otherwise seemed sure and inevitable. Examples of both kinds are afforded by the celebrated siege of Antwerp by the Spaniards towards the close of the sixteenth century, by which that flourishing city was forever deprived of its commercial prosperity, but which, on the other hand, conferred immortal fame on the general who undertook and accomplished it.