History of the United Netherlands: From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Years' Truce--1609, Volume 2

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Harper & brothers, 1861 - Netherlands

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Page i - With a, full View of the English-Dutch Struggle against Spain, and of the Origin and Destruction of the Spanish Armada. By JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, LL.D., DCL Portraits.
Page 309 - ... so that it is common for a number of them, that have got a glass in their heads, to go up into some belfry, and ring the bells for hours together, for the sake of exercise. If they see a foreigner very well made, or particularly handsome, they will say, It is a pity he is not an ENGLISHMAN.
Page 138 - ... hand, full in the sunlight, though all the scene around him was wrapped in gloom — a noble, commanding shape, entitled to the admiration which the energetic display of great powers, however unscrupulous, must always command. A dark, meridional physiognomy, a quick, alert, imposing head ; jet black, close-clipped hair ; a bold eagle's face, with full, bright, restless eye ; a man rarely reposing, always ready, never alarmed ; living in the saddle, with harness on his back — such was the Prince...
Page 54 - [Philip II.] as that cunctative Roman scrawls his marginal apostilles on each despatch ; he pries into all the stratagems of Camillus, Hortensius, Mucius, Julius, Tullius, and the rest of those ancient heroes who lent their names to the diplomatic masqueraders of the sixteenth century ; he enters the cabinet of the...
Page 1 - Habit, necessity, and the natural gifts of the man had combined to invest him at last with an authority which seemed more than human. There was such general confidence in his sagacity, courage, and purity that the nation had come to think with his brain and to act with his hand. It was natural that, for an instant, there should be a feeling as of absolute and helpless paralysis.
Page 382 - God hath stirred up this action," he repeated again, "to be a school to breed up soldiers to defend the freedom of England, which through these long times of peace and quietness is brought into a most dangerous estate, if it should be attempted. Our delicacy is such that we are already weary, yet this journey is naught in respect to the misery and hardship that soldiers must and do endure.
Page 2 - Lord was better pleased with adverbs than nouns ;"2 the well-known result being that the traitor was hanged and the Sovereign saved. Yet such was the condition of Europe at that day. A small, dull, elderly, imperfectly-educated, patient, plodding invalid, with white hair and protruding under-jaw, and dreary visage, was sitting day after day, seldom speaking, never smiling, seven or eight hours out of every twenty-four, at a writing table covered with heaps of interminable despatches, in a cabinet...
Page 421 - We could never have imagined, had we not seen it fall out in experience, that a man raised up by ourself, and extraordinarily favoured by us above any other subject of this land...
Page 470 - ... one nor the other will willingly make their own retreat. Jesus! what availeth wit, when it fails the owner at greatest need? Do that you are bidden, and leave your considerations for your own affairs. For in some things you had clear commandment, which you did not, and in others none, and did. We princes be wary enough of our bargains. Think you I will be bound by your own speech to make no peace for mine own matters without their consent? It is enough that I injure not their country nor themselves...
Page 422 - ... in most undutiful a sort, you may not therefore think that we have so little care of the reparation thereof as we mind to pass so great a wrong in silence...

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