Four hundred years ago Leyden could brag about its 100,000 population without treading on the toes of any city in Holland. To-day it contains little more than half as many souls as it did then. Since its “revision downward” from its pinnacle at the top of the Dutch textile industry, it has seemed a sacrilege to conduct business in the place. Its university sustained for a time the reputation that its weaving enterprises relinquished, but now we go to Vienna, instead of to Leyden, to glean the fine points in the science of medicine. Using Discovery for a fulcrum, Time undermines methods with the infallibility of the sun’s attraction, and brands them as obsolete forever. The historical bench mark of Leyden is the siege it survived at the point of the Spanish bayonet in the sixteenth century. Lasting, in the aggregate, from October 31, 1573, until October 3, 1574, this siege may be considered as one of the longest and most persistent in the annals of history, and its ultimate relief was as characteristic, picturesque, and ingenious as if it had been the plot of a tale by Dumas. At the expense of the lives of 4,000 patriots, himself included, Count Louis of Nassau effected a partial relief of Leyden five months after the siege commenced; but, encouraged by the butchery of this Dutch commander and his comparative handful of soldiers, the Spaniards continued to hold on so tenaciously that William the Silent concocted the daring scheme to flood the intervening country with water from the sea so that his fleet might sail in to the rescue. Having already reduced Leyden to the point of starvation, Valdez, the Spanish general, in glowing phrases offered pardon to the citizens if they would but open the gates of the beleaguered city and surrender. But the people would have none of it, placing renewed confidences in their leader, William of Orange, and consoling themselves as best they could with the firm belief that he was listening to their prayers and would ultimately devise some means of raising the blockade. As time dragged wearily on, the sorties of the Dutch became less frequent and, finally, it was announced by the din of clanging church bells that the gates should henceforth be kept closed and no man should venture outside the city. Even at this time, William, unbeknown to the people of Leyden, was appealing to the States to allow him to open the flood gates of Rotterdam and Schiedam and to pierce the dikes along the Meuse and the Yssel in order to inundate the country and give his fleet a fairway to the very watchtowers of Leyden. After much debate, his proposition for effecting the relief, although a most destructive one to the surrounding country, was accepted; bonds were issued by the States to help defray the expenses of the task, and patriotic Dutch housewives disposed of silver plate and jewelry as their contributions to the financial furtherance of the scheme.