The Express.
London, England, 1868-01-02 00:00:00

literature.

.Ilietory of the United Netheetands, from the Death of
Milian% the Silent to the Twelve Years' Truce-
-1609. By Josh LOTHROP MOMS!, D.C.L.,
author of " The Rise of the Dutch Republic."
In four volumes. Vols. 111. and IV. London :
John Murray, Albemarle-street. 1867.
We are glad to meet Mr. Motley again on the
ground he has made his own, and to hear front him
the heroic story he tells with such dramatic inte-
rest and power. In these two volumes he com-
pletes the history of the great struggle which ended
111 the year 1609 by the virtual recognition by
Spain of the independence of the Nether-1
land Republic, and its formal admission into
the family of nations by the Twelve Years'
Trace. By a change in his plan Mr. Motley has
given a more than usually dramatic unity to his
work. Instead of continuing the history into the
duller times of peace, he has brought it to a close
with the war it narrates. At the end of the forty
of war a short period of quiet intervened
fore the Thirty Years' War began. Instead of
narrating the tamer history of that ten years' in-
terlude at the end of the present work, Mr.
Motley has reserved it for the opening chapters of
another work which will tell the story of the
Thirty Years' War, concluding with the Peace of
Westphalia, ae this concludes with the Twelve
Years' Truce. By this extension of his plan Mr.
Motley not only gives unity and effect to the dra-
matic and exciting story he has to tell, but makes
his own one of the most interesting and important
periods of human history. The period of eighty
years, which witnessed the rise of the Dutch Re-
public and ended by the establishment of the
United Provinces in an unquestioned indepen-
dence, was the transition period between mediae-
val and modern Europe. During that long agony
of the European nations a new Europe was born.
The idea of Catholic unity received its death-blow,
and the idea of toleration, which is but a rudi-
mentary form of the principle of religious liberty,
first emerged into the light. The Catholic idea
was clear to the minds of those who had under-
taken its defence, but the full meaning of the
Protestant idea was hidden from those who made
the most heroic sacrifices on its behalf. They
fought for liberty for themselves, and only time
and the stern teaching of events led to
the ultimate extension of that liberty •to
those who differed from them as they
differed from the ancient faith. But the
whole of these wars which desolated Europe for
eighty years, were wars of religion. Schiller tells
us of the thirty years' war, that though reasons of
state may have actuated the princes, reasons of
religion actuated the peoples, and Mr. Motley, who
gives the religious aspects of the war no great and
unnatural prominence, shows that the same state-
ment may be applied to the whole series. But out
of the religious motive a political motive grew at
length. " The disease of liberty," says Mr. Mot-
ley, " threatened to become epidemic in Europe,"
and priest mid king coalesced in the endeavour to
stop its spread. To the gallant Dutchmen repub-
licanism was an unavoidable and reluctantly ad-
mitted neccesity ; but they fought for political
freedom as the condition of religious and cmmer-
cial freedom, though they understood neither of
these forms of freedom as we understand them
now. Mr. Motley, in describing Barneveld, has
described the age in which Bitrueveld lived.
" A climnpion of liberties rather than of liberty,
he defended his fatherland with heart and soul
mailed the stranger ; yet the government of
that fatherland was in his judgment to be trans-
ferred from the hand of the foreigner, not to the
self-governing people, but to the provincial corpo-
rations. For the people he had no respect and
perhaps little affection. He often spoke of popular
rights with c attempt. Of popular sovereignty he
had no conception. His patriotism, like his ambi-
tion, was provincial." But the men, to nearly all
of whom these words will apply, who fought their
own battle with such heroic persistency and valour,
uncousciously fought the battle of liberty against
despotism, and, once for all, won the fight. Their
example was contagious. It propagated itself in
other lands and in after times, and produced results
of which they did not even dream. Fcr that which
really fought in the Netherlands was the Puri-
tanism which afterwards laid the foundations of
the American republic, which won British freedom
in the strife with the Stuarts, and which has just
won the great battle between free and slave society
in the United States. On the continent of Europe
the lines of religious doniarcation which were
drawn at the close of the eighty years of war re-
main at the present day, and till within a few
years have corresponded in great degree with the
limits of constitutional and irresponsible govern-
ment. But the seeds of liberty sown by the
United Netherlands have grown up outside the
European limits, until a band of free communities
—enjoying a wider freedom than the Dutchmen
dreamed of—stretches round the world.
There is ennothing very fitting in Mr. Motley's
selection of such a theme as that of the long
struggle of the Netherlands for their liberties.
Himself the diplomatist of a republican federation,
he finds continual points of contact between the
history he is writing and that whichhis own country
is enacting. Indeed the living interest for this
generation of Americans which their muntrymen's
patriotism gives his history may possibly a little
hinder its appreciation in future times. He writes,
of course, with all that enthusiastic absorption in I
his subject which becomes the historian ; but now
and then ho thinks of his audience, and draws
lessons for the United States from the failures and
mistalsex, the virtues and the successes,, if the United
Netherlands. But on such a theme it is impossible
that he should not moralise. The story he has to
tell is without its equal in history. The capture
of Masada was not more heroic than that oif Breda,
with which this third volume opens, and the de-
fence of Jerusalem is even surpassed in interest by
the defence of Ostend, which is narrated at length
in the concluding volume. These are only epi-
sodes in a narrative which in every page illustrates
the virtues free men love and the evils they need
to dread. These two volumes take us through
twenty years of hand-to-hand fight between
despotism and freedom. A population a little
larger than that of London not only established
their own freedom against the overwhelming forces
of despotism, but explored the Arctic Sea and
discovered the Antarctic Continent, built up an
immense commerce, made discoveries which were a
new starting point in science, and made the narrow
strip of land they had won from the ocean the
fatherland of modern commerce and modern free-
dom. Mr. Motley tells their story with complete
appreciation of their virtues and full knowledge of
their defects. No romance can be more interesting
than lie makes this history, and no Englishman
can read it in this time of commercial, political, and
social gloom without finding his faith in human
progress greatly revived and strengthened, and his
satisfaction with his own time and its prospects
indefinitely increased.

RAILWAY COMMUNICATION WITH THE EAST-END,
—A numerously attended meeting was held at the Vic-
toria Tavern. Burdettnead, Bow-common, on Tuesday
evening, for the purpose of obtaining an improved system
of railway communication with the City and other parts of
the metropolis. Yr. W. Newton took the chair. Several
of the inhabitants addressed the meeting, and pointed out
the rising character of the neighbourhood and the want of
railway communication. Although the Bow extensioa of
the Black wall Railway paned through the district, the
inhabitants had to travel some distance, either to I/-
Bow-station of the North London or to Btelney, to avail
themselves of a train ; and it was suggested that if a
station was formed in the Burdett-roaa, a fine road lead-
ing to Victoria-park. a new and very remunerative trail.
would be developed. Resolutions were then adopted
urging the necessity of a station being opened is the die.
that, and a memorial to the directors of the Great Eastern
Railway Company, the lessees of the Madman lira was
arranged.
On Tuesday two bailiffs presented • warrant at
the shop of Mr. Carr, the biscuit manufacturer, at
Carlisle, mthorising them to seise two sacks of meal
for payment of certain aura tithes due to she Rev. Mr.
Point, but which Mr. Carr, being a quaker, Musa so
ontecientious grounds to pay. The meal was atierWasels
old by auction at the Market Cross.
HOSPITAL FOR DISEASIS OP TEM Tabu; 31t,
GOLDEN-sou AIM, W.—During the week gala*
December 203 patients were under wassails% af
IMO Mew lONS.