nests of tyranny, by which the flourishing cities of the land were kept in perpetual anxiety. Whether in the hands of King, nobles, or magistrates, they were equally odious to him, and he had long since determined that they should be razed to the ground. In short, he believed that the estates had thrust their heads into the lion's mouth, and he foresaw the most gloomy consequences from the treaty which had just been concluded. He believed, to use his own language, "that the only difference between Don John and Alva or Requesens was, that he was younger and more foolish than his predecessors, less capable of concealing his venom, more impatient, to dip his hands in blood." In the Pacification of Ghent, the Prince had achieved the prize of his life-long labors. He had banded a mass of provinces by the ties of a common history, language, and customs, into a league against a foreign tyranny. He had grappled Holland and Zealand to their sister provinces by a common love for their ancient liberties, by a common hatred to a Spanish soldiery. He had exorcised the evil demon of religious bigotry by which the body politic had been possessed so many years; for the Ghent treaty, largely interpreted, opened the door to universal toleration. In the Perpetual Edict the Prince saw his work undone. Holland and Zealand were again cut adrift from the other fifteen provinces, and war would soon be let loose upon that devoted little territory. The article stipulating the maintenance of the Ghent treaty he regarded as idle wind; the solemn saws of the State Council and the quiddities from Louvain being likely to prove but slender bulwarks against the returning tide of tyranny. Either it was tacitly intended to tolerate the Reformed religion, or to hunt it down. To argue that the Ghent treaty, loyally interpreted, strengthened ecclesiastical or royal despotism, was to contend that a maniac was more dangerous in fetters than when armed with a sword; it was to be blind to the difference between a private conventicle and a public scaffold. The Perpetual Edict, while affecting to sustain the treaty, would necessarily destroy it at a blow, while during the brief interval of repose, tyranny would have renewed its youth like the eagles. Was it possible, then, for William of Orange to sustain the Perpetual Edict, the compromise with Don John? Ten thousand ghosts from the Lake of Harlem, from the famine and plague-stricken streets of Leyden, from the smoking ruins of Antwerp, rose to warn him against such a composition with a despotism as subtle as it was remorseless.