JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY

[John Lothrop Motley was born at Dorchester, now a part of Boston, April 15, 1814, and died near Dorchester, in England, May 29, 1877. His life was passed in dealing with the affairs of nations, either of the past, as historian, or of the present, as diplomatist; he therefore lived much of his life abroad. He was first a student of law at Göttingen and Berlin, and later minister to Austria and then to England. He was also, however, led to Europe by the necessities of his studies on the history of Holland and of Europe in the sixteenth century. He published: The Rise of the Dutch Republic, in 1856, History of the United Netherlands, in 1861-8, and The Life and Death of John of Barneveld (1874). Before settling down to the historical work which has made him famous, he wrote two novels, Morton's Hope (1839) and Merry Mount (1849). He was a man of charming personality, as may be gathered from his Correspondence (1889), or from the Memoir (1879), by Oliver Wendell Holmes.]

It is not unnatural at first to compare Motley with Prescott. Indeed, the comparison forced itself upon the mind of the younger man at the very beginning of his career as a historian, when, being already heart and soul committed to the Revolt of the Netherlands, he learned that Prescott had already collected materials for a history of Philip the Second. The elder scholar behaved in the most liberal and sympathetic manner, encouraged the younger student most earnestly to go on, and assured him that "no two books ever injured each other." He was not wrong, in this case at least. A comparison of these two great historians serves chiefly to emphasize the strong points of each.

Both are distinguished by immense thoroughness in dealing with their materials, both by the challenging care of their style. With their characteristics as historians we are here not closely concerned, but we certainly cannot neglect the matter. As a historian there can be no doubt of Motley's hard work, breadth of knowledge, sound accuracy, sincerity. The same thing can be said of Prescott, who has a most engaging and disinterested impartiality, besides. But Motley could not have been disinterestedly impar

tial. He was writing, not of Spaniards and Moors, Incas and Aztecs, but of the rise of a republic, of a father of his country, of the growth of religious toleration. He was just, but he could not be disinterested. Indeed, by his very nature Motley was not a disinterested observer. No novelist can afford to be disinterested : it is too catching. Motley did not become famous as a novelist, certainly, but he had many of the gifts of a novelist. He was a man of temperament for one thing, and a man of belief for another. Sympathy for his subject led him to the eighty years' war, and his position was necessarily taken beforehand. It is then with allowance for the personal equation that Motley is impartial.

It is this very personal equation, however, which gives him his great charm as a man of letters, and which enables him to tell a story and to describe a thing so remarkably. It is true that this is not all. Patient industry and hard work counted for more than we of the laity can well understand. Prescott wrote to him of the vivid details of the sack of Saint Quentin, which Motley had found in a dry Documentos Ineditos, into which Prescott had never thought to look. And any one who reads the account of the fireships at the Prince of Parma's bridge, comes near being chilled at the list of authorities at the end, which Motley fortunately did not think necessary "to cite step by step."

But all this mass of material is fused by his spirit into a living reality, and that is the first thing that makes Motley noteworthy for everybody. If it be one of the tests of an author's power that he can make real in his reader's mind the thoughts and feelings which are real to him, Motley stands the test well. It is true that he has an advantage, as did Prescott, in his subject-matter, but certainly a great part of that advantage was discovered by himself. Everybody knew that Don John, of Austria, and Sir Philip Sidney were romantic figures, but how about the men of Haarlem, who sallied forth on skates and chased the Spaniards about on the ice, or the sea beggars who raised the siege of Leyden by sailing their fleet up to the city walls? These things had been, but had not taken the mind. Motley had the sympathy to see life in the facts this was the first thing needful to enable us to see the facts as life. He was not a close student: he was a man of the world. Indeed, his non-scholastic character comes near interference with

his peculiar power. One of the charming characteristics of the man was gentle humor, delicate satire, sedate epigram, courteous irony. Everybody will remember how this lights up the Dutch Republic; in his later work we are sometimes distracted a little by it from a matter we wish to engross us.

But Motley not only saw life in the facts, he had a very sane feeling for dramatic and narrative propriety; in fact, he sometimes had even an ultra-scenic feeling. Rarely carried too far, this feeling helped him to a remarkable epic unity in his whole work, a unity of which the remarkable thing was that it seems so natural. Proportion and relation in time and space, these matters are as much a part of his literary manner as picturesqueness and life. And although the former are most noticeable in his way of looking at things, the latter are the most noteworthy in his way of dealing with them.

Motley continued the honorable succession of American historians and surpassed all who had preceded him because he gained from their work. He avoided their mistakes and either imitated or naturally had their qualities. Irving had been romantic and Sparks had been laborious. Bancroft was an analyst, but he gave his work the unity of a great idea; and Prescott, an analyst too, had moulded his material into a unity of form. Motley had something of all these things, but in him they were fused and modified into a remarkable literary power that has never been surpassed by an American historian. He had certain minor faults. In some directions, notably in ease and power of narrative, he is surpassed by Parkman. But for the large powers of a historian, as history was understood in his day, he has no superior.

EDWARD EVERETT HALE, JR.

THE RELIGION OF WILLIAM OF ORANGE

DURING all these triumphs of Alva, the Prince of Orange had not lost his self-possession. One after another, each of his bold, skilfully-conceived and carefully-prepared plans had failed. Villers had been entirely discomfited at Dalhem, Cocqueville had been cut to pieces in Picardy, and now the valiant and experienced Louis had met with an entire overthrow in Friesland. The brief success of the patriots at Heiliger Lee had been washed out in the blood-torrents of Jemmingen. Tyranny was more triumphant, the provinces more timidly crouching, than ever. The friends on whom William of Orange relied in Germany, never enthusiastic in his cause, although many of them true-hearted and liberal, now grew cold and anxious. For months long, his most faithful and affectionate allies, such men as the Elector of Hesse and the Duke of Wirtemberg, as well as the less trustworthy Augustus of Saxony, had earnestly expressed their opinion that, under the circumstances, his best course was to sit still and watch the course of events.

It was known that the Emperor had written an urgent letter to Philip on the subject of his policy in the Netherlands in general, and concerning the position of Orange in particular. All persons, from the Emperor down to the pettiest potentate, seemed now of opinion that the Prince had better pause; that he was, indeed, bound to wait the issue of that remonstrance. "Your highness must sit still," said Landgrave William. "Your highness must sit still," said Augustus of Saxony. "You must move neither hand nor foot in the cause of the perishing provinces," said the Emperor. "Not a soldier horse, foot, or dragoon shall be levied within the Empire. If you violate the peace of the realm, and embroil us with our excellent brother and cousin Philip, it is at your own peril. You have nothing to do but to keep quiet and await his answer to our letter." But the Prince knew how much effect his sitting still would produce upon the cause of liberty and religion. He knew how much effect the Emperor's letter was like to have upon the heart of Philip. knew that the more impenetrable the darkness now gathering over

He

that land of doom which he had devoted his life to defend, the more urgently was he forbidden to turn his face away from it in its affliction. He knew that thousands of human souls, nigh to perishing, were daily turning towards him as their only hope on earth, and he was resolved, so long as he could dispense a single ray of light, that his countenance should never be averted. It is difficult to contemplate his character, at this period, without being infected with a perhaps dangerous enthusiasm. It is not an easy task coldly to analyze a nature which contained so much of the self-sacrificing and the heroic, as well as of the adroit and the subtle; and it is almost impossible to give utterance to the emotions which naturally swell the heart at the contemplation of so much active virtue, without rendering oneself liable to the charge of excessive admiration. Through the mists of adversity, a human form may dilate into proportions which are colossal and deceptive. Our judgment may thus, perhaps, be led captive, but at any rate the sentiment excited is more healthful than that inspired by the mere shedder of blood, by the merely selfish conqueror. When the cause of the champion is that of human right against tyranny, of political and religious freedom against an allengrossing and absolute bigotry, it is still more difficult to restrain veneration within legitimate bounds. To liberate the souls and bodies of millions, to maintain for a generous people, who had well-nigh lost their all, those free institutions which their ancestors had bequeathed, was a noble task for any man. But here stood a Prince of ancient race, vast possessions, imperial blood, one of the great ones of the earth, whose pathway along the beaten track would have been smooth and successful, but who was ready to pour out his wealth like water, and to coin his heart's blood, drop by drop, in this virtuous but almost desperate cause. He felt that of a man to whom so much had been entrusted, much was to be asked. God had endowed him with an incisive and comprehensive genius, unfaltering fortitude, and with the rank and fortune which enable a man to employ his faculties, to the injury or the happiness of his fellows, on the widest scale. The Prince felt the reponsibility, and the world was to learn the result.

It was about this time that a deep change came over his mind.