Have You Read This?

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 647, 26 April 1929, Page 16

Have You Read This?

WILLIAM OF ORANGE JOH V LOTHBOP MOTLEY. "The Rise of the Dutch Republic.” John I.othrop Motley (ISI4-1877), one of the most famous of American historians, had a distinguished record at Harvard, Gottingen, and Berlin before passing into the Diplomatic Service. H was American Minister in Vienna Jrom 1861 to 1867, and in London in 1869-70. He lived a long time in England and died at Frampton Court. Dorchester. But he is not remembered as a diplomat nor as the author of several novels. His greatest work was ”The Rise of the Dutch Republic,” which was published in London in 1856 and brought him immediate fame. His style , of which the following estimate of William the Silent is a fair specimen, is clear and vigorous and at times lofty and noble. HE possessed, too, that which to the heathen philosopher seemed the greatest good—the sound mind in the sound body. His physical frame ■was after death found so perfect that a long life might have been in store for him, notwithstanding all which he had endured. The desperate illness of 1574, the frightful gunshot wound inflicted by Jaureguy in 1582, had left no traces. The physicians pronounced that his body presented an aspect of perfect health. His temperament was c heerful. At table, the pleasures of which, in moderation, were his only relaxation, he was always animated and merry, and this jocoseness was partly natural, partly intentional. In the darkest hours of his country’s trial, he affected a serenity which he was far from feeling, so that his apparent gaiety at momentous epochs was even censured by dullards, -who could not c omprehend its philosophy, nor applaud the flippancy of William the Silent. He went through life bearing the load of a people’s sorrows upon his shoulders with a smiling face. Their name was the last word upon his lips, save the simple affirmative, with which the soldier who had been battling for the right all his lifetime commended his soul in dying “to his great Captain, Christ.’' The people were grateful and affectionate, for they trusted the character of their “Father William,” and not all the clouds which calumny could c:ollect ever dimmed to their eyes the radiance of that lofty mind to which they were accustomed, in their darkest caamities, to look for light. As long as he lived he was the guiding-star of a brave nation, and when he died the little children cried in the streets.