years been failing, was taken from him by death. She had been the pride
of his happier years, the stay and solace of those which had so tried his
sensitive spirit. The blow found him already weakened by mental suffering
and bodily infirmity, and he never recovered from it. Mr. Motley's last
visit to America was in the summer and autumn of 1875. During several
weeks which he passed at Nahant, a seaside resort near Boston, I saw him
almost daily. He walked feebly and with some little difficulty, and
complained of a feeling of great weight in the right arm, which made
writing laborious. His handwriting had not betrayed any very obvious
change, so far as I had noticed in his letters. His features and speech
were without any paralytic character. His mind was clear except when, as
on one or two occasions, he complained of some confused feeling, and
walked a few minutes in the open air to compose himself. His thoughts
were always tending to revert to the almost worshipped companion from
whom death had parted him a few months before. Yet he could often be led
away to other topics, and in talking of them could be betrayed into
momentary cheerfulness of manner. His long-enduring and all-pervading
grief was not more a tribute to the virtues and graces of her whom he
mourned than an evidence of the deeply affectionate nature which in other
relations endeared him to so many whose friendship was a title to love
and honor.
I have now the privilege of once more recurring to the narrative of Mr.
Motley's daughter, Lady Harcourt.
"The harassing work and mental distress of this time [after the
recall from England], acting on an acutely nervous organization,
began the process of undermining his constitution, of which we were
so soon to see the results. It was not the least courageous act of
his life, that, smarting under a fresh wound, tired and unhappy, he
set his face immediately towards the accomplishment of fresh
literary labor. After my sister's marriage in January he went to
the Hague to begin his researches in the archives for John of
Barneveld. The Queen of the Netherlands had made ready a house
for us, and personally superintended every preparation for his
reception. We remained there until the spring, and then removed to
a house more immediately in the town, a charming old-fashioned
mansion, once lived in by John de Witt, where he had a large library
and every domestic comfort during the year of his sojourn. The
incessant literary labor in an enervating climate with enfeebled
health may have prepared the way for the first break in his
constitution, which was to show itself soon after. There were many
compensations in the life about him. He enjoyed the privilege of
constant companionship with one of the warmest hearts and finest
intellects which I have ever known in a woman,--the 'ame d'elite'
which has passed beyond this earth. The gracious sentiment with
which the Queen sought to express her sense of what Holland owed him
would have been deeply felt even had her personal friendship been
less dear to us all. From the King, the society of the Hague, and
the diplomatic circle we had many marks of kindness. Once or twice
I made short journeys with him for change of air to Amsterdam, to
look for the portraits of John of Barneveld and his wife; to
Bohemia, where, with the lingering hope of occupying himself with
the Thirty Years' War, he looked carefully at the scene of
Wallenstein's death near Prague, and later to Varzin in Pomerania
for a week with Prince Bismarck, after the great events of the
Franco-German war. In the autumn of 1872 we moved to England,
partly because it was evident that his health and my mother's
required a change; partly for private reasons to be near my sister
and her children. The day after our arrival at Bournemouth occurred
the rupture of a vessel on the lungs, without any apparently
sufficient cause. He recovered enough to revise and complete his
manuscript, and we thought him better, when at the end of July, in
London, he was struck down by the first attack of the head, which
robbed him of all after power of work, although the intellect
remained untouched. Sir William Gull sent him to Cannes for the
winter, where he was seized with a violent internal inflammation,
in which I suppose there was again the indication of the lesion of
blood-vessels. I am nearing the shadow now,--the time of which I
can hardly bear to write. You know the terrible sorrow which
crushed him on the last day of 1874,--the grief which broke his
heart and from which he never rallied. From that day it seems to me
that his life may be summed up in the two words,--patient waiting.
Never for one hour did her spirit leave him, and he strove to follow
its leading for the short and evil days left and the hope of the
life beyond. I think I have never watched quietly and reverently
the traces of one personal character remaining so strongly impressed
on another nature. With herself--depreciation and unselfishness she
would have been the last to believe how much of him was in her very
existence; nor could we have realized it until the parting came.
Henceforward, with the mind still there, but with the machinery
necessary to set it in motion disturbed and shattered, he could but
try to create small occupations with which to fill the hours of a
life which was only valued for his children's sake. Kind and loving
friends in England and America soothed the passage, and our
gratitude for so many gracious acts is deep and true. His love for
children, always a strong feeling, was gratified by the constant
presence of my sister's babies, the eldest, a little girl who bore
my mother's name, and had been her idol, being the companion of many
hours and his best comforter. At the end the blow came swiftly and
suddenly, as he would have wished it. It was a terrible shock to us
who had vainly hoped to keep him a few years longer, but at least he
was spared what he had dreaded with a great dread, a gradual failure
of mental or bodily power. The mind was never clouded, the
affections never weakened, and after a few hours of unconscious
physical struggle he lay at rest, his face beautiful and calm,
without a trace of suffering or illness. Once or twice he said, 'It
has come, it has come,' and there were a few broken words before
consciousness fled, but there was little time for messages or leave-
taking. By a strange coincidence his life ended near the town of
Dorchester, in the mother country, as if the last hour brought with
it a reminiscence of his birthplace, and of his own dearly loved
mother. By his own wish only the dates of his birth and death
appear upon his gravestone, with the text chosen by himself, 'In God
is light, and in him is no darkness at all.'"
XXIV.
CONCLUSION.--HIS CHARACTER.--HIS LABORS.--HIS REWARD.
In closing this restricted and imperfect record of a life which merits,
and in due time will, I trust, receive an ampler tribute, I cannot
refrain from adding a few thoughts which naturally suggest themselves,
and some of which may seem quite unnecessary to the reader who has
followed the story of the historian and diplomatist's brilliant and
eventful career.
Mr. Motley came of a parentage which promised the gifts of mind and body
very generally to be accounted for, in a measure at least, wherever we
find them, by the blood of one or both of the parents. They gave him
special attractions and laid him open to not a few temptations. Too many
young men born to shine in social life, to sparkle, it may be, in
conversation, perhaps in the lighter walks of literature, become
agreeable idlers, self-indulgent, frivolous, incapable of large designs
or sustained effort, lose every aspiration and forget every ideal. Our
gilded youth want such examples as this of Motley, not a solitary, but a
conspicuous one, to teach them how much better is the restlessness of a
noble ambition than the narcotized stupor of club-life or the vapid
amusement of a dressed-up intercourse which too often requires a
questionable flavor of forbidden license to render it endurable to
persons of vivacious character and temperament.
It would seem difficult for a man so flattered from his earliest days to
be modest in his self-estimate; but Motley was never satisfied with
himself. He was impulsive, and was occasionally, I have heard it said,
over excited, when his prejudices were roughly handled. In all that
related to the questions involved in our civil war, he was, no doubt,
very sensitive. He had heard so much that exasperated him in the foreign
society which he had expected to be in full sympathy with the cause of
liberty as against slavery, that he might be excused if he showed
impatience when he met with similar sentiments among his own countrymen.
He felt that he had been cruelly treated by his own government, and no
one who conceives himself to have been wronged and insulted must be
expected to reason in naked syllogisms on the propriety of the liberties
which have been taken with his name and standing. But with all his
quickness of feeling, his manners were easy and courteous, simply because
his nature was warm and kindly, and with all his natural fastidiousness
there was nothing of the coxcomb about him.
He must have had enemies, as all men of striking individuality are sure
to have; his presence cast more uncouth patriots into the shade; his
learning was a reproach to the ignorant, his fame was too bright a
distinction; his high-bred air and refinement, which he could not help,
would hardly commend him to the average citizen in an order of things in
which mediocrity is at a premium, and the natural nobility of presence,
which rarely comes without family antecedents to account for it, is not
always agreeable to the many whose two ideals are the man on horseback
and the man in his shirt-sleeves. It may well be questioned whether
Washington, with his grand manner, would be nearly as popular with what
are called "the masses" as Lincoln, with his homely ways and broad
stories. The experiment of universal suffrage must render the waters of
political and social life more or less turbid even if they remain
innoxious. The Cloaca Maxima can hardly mingle its contents with the
stream of the Aqua Claudia, without taking something from its crystal
clearness. We need not go so far as one of our well-known politicians has
recently gone in saying that no great man can reach the highest position
in our government, but we can safely say that, apart from military fame,
the loftiest and purest and finest personal qualities are not those which
can be most depended upon at the ballot-box. Strange stories are told of
avowed opposition to Mr. Motley on the ground of the most trivial
differences in point of taste in personal matters,--so told that it is
hard to disbelieve them, and they show that the caprices which we might
have thought belonged exclusively to absolute rulers among their
mistresses or their minions may be felt in the councils of a great people
which calls itself self-governing. It is perfectly true that Mr. Motley
did not illustrate the popular type of politician. He was too
high-minded, too scholarly, too generously industrious, too polished, too
much at home in the highest European circles, too much courted for his
personal fascinations, too remote from the trading world of caucus
managers. To degrade him, so far as official capital punishment could do
it, was not merely to wrong one whom the nation should have delighted to
honor as showing it to the world in the fairest flower of its young
civilization, but it was an indignity to a representative of the highest
scholarship of native growth, which every student in the land felt as a
discouragement to all sound learning and noble ambition.
If he was disappointed in his diplomatic career, he had enough, and more
than enough, to console him in his brilliant literary triumphs. He had
earned them all by the most faithful and patient labor. If he had not the
"frame of adamant" of the Swedish hero, he had his "soul of fire." No
labors could tire him, no difficulties affright him. What most surprised
those who knew him as a young man was, not his ambition, not his
brilliancy, but his dogged, continuous capacity for work. We have seen
with what astonishment the old Dutch scholar, Groen van Prinsterer,
looked upon a man who had wrestled with authors like Bor and Van Meteren,
who had grappled with the mightiest folios and toiled undiscouraged among
half-illegible manuscript records. Having spared no pains in collecting
his materials, he told his story, as we all know, with flowing ease and
stirring vitality. His views may have been more or less partial; Philip
the Second may have deserved the pitying benevolence of poor Maximilian;
Maurice may have wept as sincerely over the errors of Arminius as any one
of "the crocodile crew that believe in election;" Barneveld and Grotius
may have been on the road to Rome; none of these things seem probable,
but if they were all proved true in opposition to his views, we should
still have the long roll of glowing tapestry he has woven for us, with
all its life-like portraits, its almost moving pageants, its sieges where
we can see the artillery flashing, its battle-fields with their smoke and
fire,--pictures which cannot fade, and which will preserve his name
interwoven with their own enduring colors.
Republics are said to be ungrateful; it might be truer to say that they
are forgetful. They forgive those who have wronged them as easily as they
forget those who have done them good service. But History never forgets
and never forgives. To her decision we may trust the question, whether
the warm-hearted patriot who had stood up for his country nobly and
manfully in the hour of trial, the great scholar and writer who had
reflected honor upon her throughout the world of letters, the high-minded
public servant, whose shortcomings it taxed the ingenuity of experts to
make conspicuous enough to be presentable, was treated as such a citizen
should have been dealt with. His record is safe in her hands, and his
memory will be precious always in the hearts of all who enjoyed his
friendship.
APPENDIX.
A.
THE SATURDAY CLUB.
This club, of which we were both members, and which is still flourishing,
came into existence in a very quiet sort of way at about the same time as
"The Atlantic Monthly," and, although entirely unconnected with that
magazine, included as members some of its chief contributors. Of those
who might have been met at some of the monthly gatherings in its earlier
days I may mention Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Lowell, Motley,
Whipple, Whittier; Professors Agassiz and Peirce; John S. Dwight;
Governor Andrew, Richard H. Dana, Junior, Charles Sumner. It offered a
wide gamut of intelligences, and the meetings were noteworthy occasions.
If there was not a certain amount of "mutual admiration" among some of
those I have mentioned it was a great pity, and implied a defect in the
nature of men who were otherwise largely endowed. The vitality of this
club has depended in a great measure on its utter poverty in statutes and
by-laws, its entire absence of formality, and its blessed freedom from
speech-making.
That holy man, Richard Baxter, says in his Preface to Alleine's
"Alarm:"--
"I have done, when I have sought to remove a little scandal, which I
foresaw, that I should myself write the Preface to his Life where
himself and two of his friends make such a mention of my name, which
I cannot own; which will seem a praising him for praising me. I
confess it looketh ill-favoredly in me. But I had not the power of
other men's writings, and durst not forbear that which was his due."
I do not know that I have any occasion for a similar apology in printing
the following lines read at a meeting of members of the Saturday Club and
other friends who came together to bid farewell to Motley before his
return to Europe in 1857.
A PARTING HEALTH
Yes, we knew we must lose him,--though friendship may claim
To blend her green leaves with the laurels of fame,
Though fondly, at parting, we call him our own,
'T is the whisper of love when the bugle has blown.
As the rider that rests with the spur on his heel,
As the guardsman that sleeps in his corselet of steel,
As the archer that stands with his shaft on the string,
He stoops from his toil to the garland we bring.
What pictures yet slumber unborn in his loom
Till their warriors shall breathe and their beauties shall bloom,
While the tapestry lengthens the life-glowing dyes
That caught from our sunsets the stain of their skies!
In the alcoves of death, in the charnels of time,
Where flit the dark spectres of passion and crime,
There are triumphs untold, there are martyrs unsung,
There are heroes yet silent to speak with his tongue!
Let us hear the proud story that time has bequeathed
From lips that are warm with the freedom they breathed!
Let him summon its tyrants, and tell us their doom,
Though he sweep the black past like Van Tromp with his broom!
The dream flashes by, for the west-winds awake
On pampas, on prairie, o'er mountain and lake,
To bathe the swift bark, like a sea-girdled shrine
With incense they stole from the rose and the pine.
So fill a bright cup with the sunlight that gushed
When the dead summer's jewels were trampled and crushed;
THE TRUE KNIGHT OF LEARNING,--the world holds him dear,--
Love bless him, joy crown him, God speed his career!
B.
HABITS AND METHODS OF STUDY.
Mr. Motley's daughter, Lady Harcourt, has favored me with many
interesting particulars which I could not have learned except from a
member of his own family. Her description of his way of living and of
working will be best given in her own words:--
"He generally rose early, the hour varying somewhat at different
parts of his life, according to his work and health. Sometimes when
much absorbed by literary labor he would rise before seven, often
lighting his own fire, and with a cup of tea or coffee writing until
the family breakfast hour, after which his work was immediately
resumed, and he usually sat over his writing-table until late in the
afternoon, when he would take a short walk. His dinner hour was
late, and he rarely worked at night. During the early years of his
literary studies he led a life of great retirement. Later, after
the publication of the 'Dutch Republic' and during the years of
official place, he was much in society in England, Austria, and
Holland. He enjoyed social life, and particularly dining out,
keenly, but was very moderate and simple in all his personal habits,
and for many years before his death had entirely given up smoking.
His work, when not in his own library, was in the Archives of the
Netherlands, Brussels, Paris, the English State Paper Office, and
the British Museum, where he made his own researches, patiently and
laboriously consulting original manuscripts and reading masses of
correspondence, from which he afterwards sometimes caused copies to
be made, and where he worked for many consecutive hours a day.
After his material had been thus painfully and toilfully amassed,
the writing of his own story was always done at home, and his mind,
having digested the necessary matter, always poured itself forth in
writing so copiously that his revision was chiefly devoted to
reducing the over-abundance. He never shrank from any of the
drudgery of preparation, but I think his own part of the work was
sheer pleasure to him."
I should have mentioned that his residence in London while minister was
at the house No. 17 Arlington Street, belonging to Lord Yarborough.
C.
SIR WILLIAM GULL's ACCOUNT OF HIS ILLNESS.
I have availed myself of the permission implied in the subjoined letter
of Sir William Gull to make large extracts from his account of Mr.
Motley's condition while under his medical care. In his earlier years he
had often complained to me of those "nervous feelings connected with the
respiration" referred to by this very distinguished physician. I do not
remember any other habitual trouble to which he was subject.
74 BROOK STREET, GROSVENOR SQUARE, W.
February 13, 1878.
MY DEAR SIR,--I send the notes of Mr. Motley's last illness, as I
promised. They are too technical for general readers, but you will make
such exception as you require. The medical details may interest your
professional friends. Mr. Motley's case was a striking illustration that
the renal disease of so-called Bright's disease may supervene as part and
parcel of a larger and antecedent change in the blood-vessels in other
parts than the kidney. . . . I am, my dear sir,
Yours very truly,
WILLIAM W. GULL.
To OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, ESQ.
I first saw Mr. Motley, I believe, about the year 1870, on account
of some nervous feelings connected with the respiration. At that
time his general health was good, and all he complained of was
occasionally a feeling of oppression about the chest. There were no
physical signs of anything abnormal, and the symptoms quite passed
away in the course of time, and with the use of simple antispasmodic
remedies, such as camphor and the like. This was my first interview
with Mr. Motley, and I was naturally glad to have the opportunity of
making his acquaintance. I remember that in our conversation I
jokingly said that my wife could hardly forgive him for not making
her hero, Henri IV., a perfect character, and the earnestness with
which he replied 'au serieux,' I assure you I have fairly recorded
the facts. After this date I did not see Mr. Motley for some time.
He had three slight attacks of haemoptysis in the autumn of 1872,
but no physical signs of change in the lung tissue resulted. So
early as this I noticed that there were signs of commencing
thickening in the heart, as shown by the degree and extent of its
impulse. The condition of his health, though at that time not very
obviously failing, a good deal arrested my attention, as I thought I
could perceive in the occurrence of the haemoptysis, and in the
cardiac hypertrophy, the early beginnings of vascular degeneration.
In August, 1873, occurred the remarkable seizure, from the effects
of which Mr. Motley never recovered. I did not see him in the
attack, but was informed, as far as I can remember, that he was on a
casual visit at a friend's house at luncheon (or it might have been
dinner), when he suddenly became strangely excited, but not quite
unconscious. . . . I believed at the time, and do so still, that
there was some capillary apoplexy of the convolutions. The attack
was attended with some hemiplegic weakness on the right side, and
altered sensation, and ever after there was a want of freedom and
ease both in the gait and in the use of the arm of that side. To my
inquiries from time to time how the arm was, the patient would
always flex and extend it freely, but nearly always used the
expression, "There is a bedevilment in it;" though the handwriting
was not much, if at all, altered.
In December, 1873, Mr. Motley went by my advice to Cannes. I wrote
the following letter at the time to my friend Dr. Frank, who was
practising there:--
[This letter, every word of which was of value to the
practitioner who was to have charge of the patient, relates
many of the facts given above, and I shall therefore only give
extracts from it.]
December 29, 1873.
MY DEAR DR. FRANK,--My friend Mr. Motley, the historian and late
American Minister, whose name and fame no doubt you know very well,
has by my advice come to Cannes for the winter and spring, and I
have promised him to give you some account of his case. To me it is
one of special interest, and personally, as respects the subject of
it, of painful interest. I have known Mr. Motley for some time, but
he consulted me for the present condition about midsummer.
. . . If I have formed a correct opinion of the pathology of the
case, I believe the smaller vessels are degenerating in several
parts of the vascular area, lung, brain, and kidneys. With this
view I have suggested a change of climate, a nourishing diet, etc.;
and it is to be hoped, and I trust expected, that by great attention
to the conditions of hygiene, internal and external, the progress of
degeneration may be retarded. I have no doubt you will find, as
time goes on, increasing evidence of renal change, but this is
rather a coincidence and consequence than a cause, though no doubt
when the renal change has reached a certain point, it becomes in its
own way a factor of other lesions. I have troubled you at this
length because my mind is much occupied with the pathology of these
cases, and because no case can, on personal grounds, more strongly
challenge our attention.
Yours very truly,
WILLIAM W. GULL.
During the spring of 1874, whilst at Cannes, Mr. Motley had a sharp
attack of nephritis, attended with fever; but on returning to
England in July there was no important change in the health. The
weakness of the side continued, and the inability to undertake any
mental work. The signs of cardiac hypertrophy were more distinct.
In the beginning of the year 1875 I wrote as follows:--
February 20, 1875.
MY DEAR Mr. MOTLEY,--. . . The examination I have just made
appears to indicate that the main conditions of your health are more
stable than they were some months ago, and would therefore be so far
in favor of your going to America in the summer, as we talked of.
The ground of my doubt has lain in the possibility of such a trip
further disordering the circulation. Of this, I hope, there is now
less risk.
On the 4th of June, 1875, I received the following letter:--
CALVERLY PARK HOTEL, TUNBRIDGE WELLS,
June 4, 1875.
MY DEAR SIR WILLIAM,--I have been absent from town for a long time,
but am to be there on the 9th and 10th. Could I make an appointment
with you for either of those days? I am anxious to have a full
consultation with you before leaving for America. Our departure is
fixed for the 19th of this month. I have not been worse than usual
of late. I think myself, on the contrary, rather stronger, and it
is almost impossible for me not to make my visit to America this
summer, unless you should absolutely prohibit it. If neither of
those days should suit you, could you kindly suggest another day?
I hope, however, you can spare me half an hour on one of those days,
as I like to get as much of this bracing air as I can. Will you
kindly name the hour when I may call on you, and address me at this
hotel. Excuse this slovenly note in pencil, but it fatigues my head
and arm much more to sit at a writing-table with pen and ink.
Always most sincerely yours,
My dear Sir William,
J. L. MOTLEY.
On Mr. Motley's return from America I saw him, and found him, I
thought, rather better in general health than when he left England.
In December, 1875, Mr. Motley consulted me for trouble of vision in
reading or walking, from sensations like those produced by flakes of
falling snow coming between him and the objects he was looking at.
Mr. Bowman, one of our most excellent oculists, was then consulted.
Mr. Bowman wrote to me as follows: "Such symptoms as exist point
rather to disturbed retinal function than to any brain-mischief. It
is, however, quite likely that what you fear for the brain may have
had its counterpart in the nerve-structures of the eye, and as he is
short-sighted, this tendency may be further intensified."
Mr. Bowman suggested no more than such an arrangement of glasses as
might put the eyes, when in use, under better optic conditions.
The year 1876 was passed over without any special change worth
notice. The walking powers were much impeded by the want of control
over the right leg. The mind was entirely clear, though Mr. Motley
did not feel equal, and indeed had been advised not to apply
himself, to any literary work. Occasional conversations, when I had
interviews with him on the subject of his health, proved that the
attack which had weakened the movements of the right side had not
impaired the mental power. The most noticeable change which had
come over Mr. Motley since I first knew him was due to the death of
Mrs. Motley in December, 1874. It had in fact not only profoundly
depressed him, but, if I may so express it, had removed the centre
of his thought to a new world. In long conversations with me of a
speculative kind, after that painful event, it was plain how much
his point of view of the whole course and relation of things had
changed. His mind was the last to dogmatize on any subject. There
was a candid and childlike desire to know, with an equal confession
of the incapacity of the human intellect. I wish I could recall the
actual expressions he used, but the sense was that which has been so
well stated by Hooker in concluding an exhortation against the pride
of the human intellect, where he remarks:--
"Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade far into the
doings of the Most High; whom although to know be life, and joy to
make mention of His Name, yet our soundest knowledge is to know that
we know Him, not indeed as He is, neither can know Him; and our
safest eloquence concerning Him is our silence, when we confess
without confession that His glory is inexplicable, His greatness
above our capacity and reach. He is above and we upon earth;
therefore it behoveth our words to be wary and few."
Mrs. Motley's illness was not a long one, and the nature of it was
such that its course could with certainty be predicted. Mr. Motley
and her children passed the remaining days of her life, extending
over about a month, with her, in the mutual under standing that she
was soon to part from them. The character of the illness, and the
natural exhaustion of her strength by suffering, lessened the shock
of her death, though not the loss, to those who survived her.
The last time I saw Mr. Motley was, I believe, about two months
before his death, March 28, 1877. There was no great change in his
health, but he complained of indescribable sensations in his nervous
system, and felt as if losing the whole power of walking, but this
was not obvious in his gait, although he walked shorter distances
than before. I heard no more of him until I was suddenly summoned
on the 29th of May into Devonshire to see him. The telegram I
received was so urgent, that I suspected some rupture of a blood-
vessel in the brain, and that I should hardly reach him alive; and
this was the case. About two o'clock in the day he complained of a
feeling of faintness, said he felt ill and should not recover; and
in a few minutes was insensible with symptoms of ingravescent
apoplexy. There was extensive haemorrhage into the brain, as shown
by post-mortem examination, the cerebral vessels being atheromatous.
The fatal haemorrhage had occurred into the lateral ventricles, from
rupture of one of the middle cerebral arteries.
I am, my dear Sir,
Yours very truly,
WILLIAM W. GULL.
E.
FROM THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS SOCIETY.
At a meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society, held on Thursday,
the 14th of June, 1877, after the reading of the records of the preceding
meeting, the president, the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, spoke as follows:
"Our first thoughts to-day, gentlemen, are of those whom we may not
again welcome to these halls. We shall be in no mood, certainly,
for entering on other subjects this morning until we have given some
expression to our deep sense of the loss--the double loss--which our
Society has sustained since our last monthly meeting."--[Edmund
Quincy died May 17. John Lothrop Motley died May 29.]
After a most interesting and cordial tribute to his friend, Mr. Quincy,
Mr. Winthrop continued:
"The death of our distinguished associate, Motley, can hardly have
taken many of us by surprise. Sudden at the moment of its
occurrence, we had long been more or less prepared for it by his
failing health. It must, indeed, have been quite too evident to
those who had seen him, during the last two or three years, that his
life-work was finished. I think he so regarded it himself.
"Hopes may have been occasionally revived in the hearts of his
friends, and even in his own heart, that his long-cherished purpose
of completing a History of the Thirty Years' War, as the grand
consummation of his historical labors,--for which all his other
volumes seemed to him to have been but the preludes and overtures,
--might still be accomplished. But such hopes, faint and flickering
from his first attack, had well-nigh died away. They were like
Prescott's hopes of completing his 'Philip the Second,' or like
Macaulay's hopes of finishing his brilliant 'History of England.'
"But great as may be the loss to literature of such a crowning work
from Motley's pen, it was by no means necessary to the completeness
of his own fame. His 'Rise of the Dutch Republic,' his 'History of
the United Netherlands,' and his 'Life of John of Barneveld,' had
abundantly established his reputation, and given him a fixed place
among the most eminent historians of our country and of our age.
"No American writer, certainly, has secured a wider recognition or a
higher appreciation from the scholars of the Old World. The
universities of England and the learned societies of Europe have
bestowed upon him their largest honors. It happened to me to be in
Paris when he was first chosen a corresponding member of the
Institute, and when his claims were canvassed with the freedom and
earnestness which peculiarly characterize such a candidacy in
France. There was no mistaking the profound impression which his
first work had made on the minds of such men as Guizot and Mignet.
Within a year or two past, a still higher honor has been awarded him
from the same source. The journals not long ago announced his
election as one of the six foreign associates of the French Academy
of Moral and Political Sciences,--a distinction which Prescott would
probably have attained had he lived a few years longer, until there
was a vacancy, but which, as a matter of fact, I believe, Motley was
the only American writer, except the late Edward Livingston, of
Louisiana, who has actually enjoyed.
"Residing much abroad, for the purpose of pursuing his historical
researches, he had become the associate and friend of the most
eminent literary men in almost all parts of the world, and the
singular charms of his conversation and manners had made him a
favorite guest in the most refined and exalted circles.
"Of his relations to political and public life, this is hardly the
occasion or the moment for speaking in detail. Misconstructions and
injustices are the proverbial lot of those who occupy eminent
position. It was a duke of Vienna, if I remember rightly, whom
Shakespeare, in his 'Measure for Measure,' introduces as
exclaiming,--
'O place and greatness, millions of false eyes
Are stuck upon thee! Volumes of report
Run with these false and most contrarious quests
Upon thy doings! Thousand 'stapes of wit
Make thee the father of their idle dream,
And rack thee in their fancies!'
"I forbear from all application of the lines. It is enough for me,
certainly, to say here, to-day, that our country was proud to be
represented at the courts of Vienna and London successively by a
gentleman of so much culture and accomplishment as Mr. Motley, and
that the circumstances of his recall were deeply regretted by us
all.
"His fame, however, was quite beyond the reach of any such
accidents, and could neither be enhanced nor impaired by
appointments or removals. As a powerful and brilliant historian we
pay him our unanimous tribute of admiration and regret, and give him
a place in our memories by the side of Prescott and Irving. I do
not forget how many of us lament him, also, as a cherished friend.
"He died on the 29th ultimo, at the house of his daughter, Mrs.
Sheridan, in Dorsetshire, England, and an impressive tribute to his
memory was paid, in Westminster Abbey, on the following Sunday, by
our Honorary Member, Dean Stanley. Such a tribute, from such lips,
and with such surroundings, leaves nothing to be desired in the way
of eulogy. He was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, by the side of
his beloved wife.
"One might well say of Motley precisely what he said of Prescott, in
a letter from Rome to our associate, Mr. William Amory, immediately
on hearing of Prescott's death: 'I feel inexpressibly disappointed
--speaking now for an instant purely from a literary point of view
--that the noble and crowning monument of his life, for which he had
laid such massive foundations, and the structure of which had been
carried forward in such a grand and masterly manner, must remain
uncompleted, like the unfinished peristyle of some stately and
beautiful temple on which the night of time has suddenly descended.
But, still, the works which his great and untiring hand had already
thoroughly finished will remain to attest his learning and genius,
--a precious and perpetual possession for his country."
.................................
The President now called on Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who said:--
"The thoughts which suggest themselves upon this occasion are such
as belong to the personal memories of the dear friends whom we have
lost, rather than to their literary labors, the just tribute to
which must wait for a calmer hour than the present, following so
closely as it does on our bereavement."
.................................
"His first literary venture of any note was the story called
'Morton's Hope; or, The Memoirs of a Provincial.' This first effort
failed to satisfy the critics, the public, or himself. His
personality pervaded the characters and times which he portrayed,
so that there was a discord between the actor and his costume.
Brilliant passages could not save it; and it was plain enough that
he must ripen into something better before the world would give him
the reception which surely awaited him if he should find his true
destination.
"The early failures of a great writer are like the first sketches
of a great artist, and well reward patient study. More than this,
the first efforts of poets and story-tellers are very commonly
palimpsests: beneath the rhymes or the fiction one can almost always
spell out the characters which betray the writer's self. Take these
passages from the story just referred to:
"'Ah! flattery is a sweet and intoxicating potion, whether we drink
it from an earthen ewer or a golden chalice. . . . Flattery from
man to woman is expected: it is a part of the courtesy of society;
but when the divinity descends from the altar to burn incense to the
priest, what wonder if the idolater should feel himself transformed
into a god!'
"He had run the risk of being spoiled, but he had a safeguard in his
aspirations.
"'My ambitious anticipations,' says Morton, in the story, were as
boundless as they were various and conflicting. There was not a
path which leads to glory in which I was not destined to gather
laurels. As a warrior, I would conquer and overrun the world; as a
statesman, I would reorganize and govern it; as a historian, I would
consign it all to immortality; and, in my leisure moments, I would
be a great poet and a man of the world.'
"Who can doubt that in this passage of his story he is picturing his
own visions, one of the fairest of which was destined to become
reality?
"But there was another element in his character, which those who
knew him best recognized as one with which he had to struggle hard,
--that is, a modesty which sometimes tended to collapse into self-
distrust. This, too, betrays itself in the sentences which follow
those just quoted:--
"'In short,' says Morton, 'I was already enrolled in that large
category of what are called young men of genius, . . . men of
whom unheard-of things are expected; till after long preparation
comes a portentous failure, and then they are forgotten. . . .
Alas! for the golden imaginations of our youth. . . . They are
all disappointments. They are bright and beautiful, but they fade.'"
...........................
The President appointed Professor Lowell to write the Memoir of Mr.
Quincy, and Dr. Holmes that of Mr. Motley, for the Society's
"Proceedings."
Professor William Everett then spoke as follows:
"There is one incident, sir, in Mr. Motley's career that has not
been mentioned to-day, which is, perhaps, most vividly remembered by
those of us who were in Europe at the outbreak of our civil war in
1861. At that time, the ignorance of Englishmen, friendly or
otherwise, about America, was infinite: they knew very little of us,
and that little wrong. Americans were overwhelmed with questions,
taunts, threats, misrepresentations, the outgrowth of ignorance, and
ignoring worse than ignorance, from every class of Englishmen.
Never was an authoritative exposition of our hopes and policy worse
needed; and there was no one to do it. The outgoing diplomatic
agents represented a bygone order of things; the representatives of
Mr. Lincoln's administration had not come. At that time of anxiety,
Mr. Motley, living in England as a private person, came forward with
two letters in the 'Times,' which set forth the cause of the United
States once and for all. No unofficial, and few official, men could
have spoken with such authority, and been so certain of obtaining a
hearing from Englishmen. Thereafter, amid all the clouds of
falsehood and ridicule which we had to encounter, there was one
lighthouse fixed on a rock to which we could go for foothold, from
which we could not be driven, and against which all assaults were
impotent.
"There can be no question that the effect produced by these letters
helped, if help had been needed, to point out Mr. Motley as a
candidate for high diplomatic place who could not be overlooked.
Their value was recognized alike by his fellow-citizens in America
and his admirers in England; but none valued them more than the
little band of exiles, who were struggling against terrible odds,
and who rejoiced with a great joy to see the stars and stripes,
whose centennial anniversary those guns are now celebrating, planted
by a hand so truly worthy to rally every American to its support."
G.
POEM BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
I cannot close this Memoir more appropriately than by appending the
following poetical tribute:--
IN MEMORY OF JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.
BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
Sleep, Motley, with the great of ancient days,
Who wrote for all the years that yet shall be.
Sleep with Herodotus, whose name and praise
Have reached the isles of earth's remotest sea.
Sleep, while, defiant of the slow delays
Of Time, thy glorious writings speak for thee
And in the answering heart of millions raise
The generous zeal for Right and Liberty.
And should the days o'ertake us, when, at last,
The silence that--ere yet a human pen
Had traced the slenderest record of the past
Hushed the primeval languages of men
Upon our English tongue its spell shall cast,
Thy memory shall perish only then.
PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS OF HOLME'S MOTLEY:
A great historian is almost a statesman
Admired or despised, as if he or she were our contemporary
Alas! one never knows when one becomes a bore
All classes are conservative by necessity
Already looking forward to the revolt of the slave States
American Unholy Inquisition
An order of things in which mediocrity is at a premium
Attacked by the poetic mania
Becoming more learned, and therefore more ignorant
best defence in this case is little better than an impeachment
Better is the restlessness of a noble ambition
Blessed freedom from speech-making
But not thoughtlessly indulgent to the boy
But after all this isn't a war It is a revolution
Can never be repaired and never sufficiently regretted
Cold water of conventional and commonplace encouragement
Considerations of state have never yet failed the axe
Considerations of state as a reason
Could paint a character with the ruddy life-blood coloring
Emulation is not capability
Everything else may happen This alone must happen
Excused by their admirers for their shortcomings
Excuses to disarm the criticism he had some reason to fear
Fear of the laugh of the world at its sincerity
Fitted "To warn, to comfort, and command"
Flattery is a sweet and intoxicating potion
Forget those who have done them good service
Fortune's buffets and rewards can take with equal thanks
He was not always careful in the construction of his sentences
His learning was a reproach to the ignorant
His dogged, continuous capacity for work
History never forgets and never forgives
How many more injured by becoming bad copies of a bad ideal
Ignoble facts which strew the highways of political life
In revolutions the men who win are those who are in earnest
Indoor home life imprisons them in the domestic circle
Intellectual dandyisms of Bulwer
Irresistible force in collision with an insuperable resistance
It is n't strategists that are wanted so much as believers
John Quincy Adams
Kindly shadow of oblivion
Manner in which an insult shall be dealt with
Mediocrity is at a premium
Misanthropical, sceptical philosopher
Most entirely truthful child he had ever seen
Motley was twice sacrificed to personal feelings
Nearsighted liberalism
No great man can reach the highest position in our government
No two books, as he said, ever injured each other
No man is safe (from news reporters)
Not a single acquaintance in the place, and we glory in the fact
Only foundation fit for history,--original contemporary document
Our mortal life is but a string of guesses at the future
Over excited, when his prejudices were roughly handled
Plain enough that he is telling his own story
Played so long with other men's characters and good name
Progress should be by a spiral movement
Public which must have a slain reputation to devour
Radical, one who would uproot, is a man whose trade is dangerous
Reasonable to pay our debts rather than to repudiate them
Recall of a foreign minister for alleged misconduct in office
Republics are said to be ungrateful
Sees the past in the pitiless light of the present
Self-educated man, as he had been a self-taught boy
Shall Slavery die, or the great Republic?
Solitary and morose, the necessary consequence of reckless study
Spirit of a man who wishes to be proud of his country
Studied according to his inclinations rather than by rule
Style above all other qualities seems to embalm for posterity
Suicide is confession
Talked impatiently of the value of my time
The fellow mixes blood with his colors!
The loss of hair, which brings on premature decay
The personal gifts which are nature's passport everywhere
The nation is as much bound to be honest as is the individual
The dead men of the place are my intimate friends
They knew very little of us, and that little wrong
This Somebody may have been one whom we should call Nobody
Twenty assaults upon fame and had forty books killed under him
Unequivocal policy of slave emancipation
Vain belief that they were men at eighteen or twenty
Visible atmosphere of power the poison of which
Weight of a thousand years of error
Wonders whether it has found its harbor or only lost its anchor
Wringing a dry cloth for drops of evidence
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS:
[Including the Memoir of Motley by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.]
1566, the last year of peace
A pleasantry called voluntary contributions or benevolences
A good lawyer is a bad Christian
A terrible animal, indeed, is an unbridled woman
A common hatred united them, for a time at least
A penal offence in the republic to talk of peace or of truce
A most fatal success
A country disinherited by nature of its rights
A free commonwealth--was thought an absurdity
A hard bargain when both parties are losers
A burnt cat fears the fire
A despot really keeps no accounts, nor need to do so
A sovereign remedy for the disease of liberty
A pusillanimous peace, always possible at any period
A man incapable of fatigue, of perplexity, or of fear
A truce he honestly considered a pitfall of destruction
A great historian is almost a statesman
Able men should be by design and of purpose suppressed
About equal to that of England at the same period
Absolution for incest was afforded at thirty-six livres
Abstinence from unproductive consumption
Abstinence from inquisition into consciences and private parlour
Absurd affectation of candor
Accepting a new tyrant in place of the one so long ago deposed
Accustomed to the faded gallantries
Achieved the greatness to which they had not been born
Act of Uniformity required Papists to assist
Acts of violence which under pretext of religion
Admired or despised, as if he or she were our contemporary
Adulation for inferiors whom they despise
Advanced orthodox party-Puritans
Advancing age diminished his tendency to other carnal pleasures
Advised his Majesty to bestow an annual bribe upon Lord Burleigh
Affecting to discredit them
Affection of his friends and the wrath of his enemies
Age when toleration was a vice
Agreements were valid only until he should repent
Alas! the benighted victims of superstition hugged their chains
Alas! we must always have something to persecute
Alas! one never knows when one becomes a bore
Alexander's exuberant discretion
All Italy was in his hands
All fellow-worms together
All business has been transacted with open doors
All reading of the scriptures (forbidden)
All the majesty which decoration could impart
All denounced the image-breaking
All claimed the privilege of persecuting
All his disciples and converts are to be punished with death
All Protestants were beheaded, burned, or buried alive
All classes are conservative by necessity
All the ministers and great functionaries received presents
All offices were sold to the highest bidder
Allow her to seek a profit from his misfortune
Allowed the demon of religious hatred to enter into its body
Almost infinite power of the meanest of passions
Already looking forward to the revolt of the slave States
Altercation between Luther and Erasmus, upon predestination
Always less apt to complain of irrevocable events
American Unholy Inquisition
Amuse them with this peace negotiation
An inspiring and delightful recreation (auto-da-fe)
An hereditary papacy, a perpetual pope-emperor
An age when to think was a crime
An unjust God, himself the origin of sin
An order of things in which mediocrity is at a premium
Anarchy which was deemed inseparable from a non-regal form
Anatomical study of what has ceased to exist
And give advice. Of that, although always a spendthrift
And now the knife of another priest-led fanatic
And thus this gentle and heroic spirit took its flight
Angle with their dissimulation as with a hook
Announced his approaching marriage with the Virgin Mary
Annual harvest of iniquity by which his revenue was increased
Anxiety to do nothing wrong, the senators did nothing at all
Are apt to discharge such obligations--(by) ingratitude
Are wont to hang their piety on the bell-rope
Argument in a circle
Argument is exhausted and either action or compromise begins
Aristocracy of God's elect
Arminianism
Arrested on suspicion, tortured till confession
Arrive at their end by fraud, when violence will not avail them
Artillery
As logical as men in their cups are prone to be
As the old woman had told the Emperor Adrian
As if they were free will not make them free
As lieve see the Spanish as the Calvinistic inquisition
As ready as papists, with age, fagot, and excommunication
As with his own people, keeping no back-door open
As neat a deception by telling the truth
At a blow decapitated France
At length the twig was becoming the tree
Atheist, a tyrant, because he resisted dictation from the clergy
Attachment to a half-drowned land and to a despised religion
Attacked by the poetic mania
Attacking the authority of the pope
Attempting to swim in two waters
Auction sales of judicial ermine
Baiting his hook a little to his appetite
Barbara Blomberg, washerwoman of Ratisbon
Batavian legion was the imperial body guard
Beacons in the upward path of mankind
Beating the Netherlanders into Christianity
Beautiful damsel, who certainly did not lack suitors
Because he had been successful (hated)
Becoming more learned, and therefore more ignorant
Been already crimination and recrimination more than enough
Before morning they had sacked thirty churches
Began to scatter golden arguments with a lavish hand
Beggars of the sea, as these privateersmen designated themselves
Behead, torture, burn alive, and bury alive all heretics
Being the true religion, proved by so many testimonies
Believed in the blessed advent of peace
Beneficent and charitable purposes (War)
best defence in this case is little better than an impeachment
Bestowing upon others what was not his property
Better to be governed by magistrates than mobs
Better is the restlessness of a noble ambition
Beware of a truce even more than of a peace
Bigotry which was the prevailing characteristic of the age
Bishop is a consecrated pirate
Blessed freedom from speech-making
Blessing of God upon the Devil's work
Bold reformer had only a new dogma in place of the old ones
Bomb-shells were not often used although known for a century
Breath, time, and paper were profusely wasted and nothing gained
Brethren, parents, and children, having wives in common
Bribed the Deity
Bungling diplomatists and credulous dotards
Burned, strangled, beheaded, or buried alive (100,000)
Burned alive if they objected to transubstantiation
Burning with bitter revenge for all the favours he had received
Burning of Servetus at Geneva
Business of an officer to fight, of a general to conquer
But the habit of dissimulation was inveterate
But after all this isn't a war It is a revolution
But not thoughtlessly indulgent to the boy
Butchery in the name of Christ was suspended
By turns, we all govern and are governed
Calling a peace perpetual can never make it so
Calumny is often a stronger and more lasting power than disdain
Can never be repaired and never sufficiently regretted
Canker of a long peace
Care neither for words nor menaces in any matter
Cargo of imaginary gold dust was exported from the James River
Casting up the matter "as pinchingly as possibly might be"
Casual outbursts of eternal friendship
Certain number of powers, almost exactly equal to each other
Certainly it was worth an eighty years' war
Changed his positions and contradicted himself day by day
Character of brave men to act, not to expect
Charles the Fifth autocrat of half the world
Chief seafaring nations of the world were already protestant
Chieftains are dwarfed in the estimation of followers
Children who had never set foot on the shore
Christian sympathy and a small assistance not being sufficient
Chronicle of events must not be anticipated
Claimed the praise of moderation that their demands were so few
Cold water of conventional and commonplace encouragement
College of "peace-makers," who wrangled more than all
Colonel Ysselstein, "dismissed for a homicide or two"
Compassing a country's emancipation through a series of defeats
Conceding it subsequently, after much contestation
Conceit, and procrastination which marked the royal character
Conciliation when war of extermination was intended
Conclusive victory for the allies seemed as predestined
Conde and Coligny
Condemned first and inquired upon after
Condemning all heretics to death
Conflicting claims of prerogative and conscience
Conformity of Governments to the principles of justice
Confused conferences, where neither party was entirely sincere
Considerable reason, even if there were but little justice
Considerations of state have never yet failed the axe
Considerations of state as a reason
Considered it his special mission in the world to mediate
Consign to the flames all prisoners whatever (Papal letter)
Constant vigilance is the price of liberty
Constitute themselves at once universal legatees
Constitutional governments, move in the daylight
Consumer would pay the tax, supposing it were ever paid at all
Contained within itself the germs of a larger liberty
Contempt for treaties however solemnly ratified
Continuing to believe himself invincible and infallible
Converting beneficent commerce into baleful gambling
Could handle an argument as well as a sword
Could paint a character with the ruddy life-blood coloring
Could not be both judge and party in the suit
Could do a little more than what was possible
Country would bear his loss with fortitude
Courage of despair inflamed the French
Courage and semblance of cheerfulness, with despair in his heart
Court fatigue, to scorn pleasure
Covered now with the satirical dust of centuries
Craft meaning, simply, strength
Created one child for damnation and another for salvation
Crescents in their caps: Rather Turkish than Popish
Crimes and cruelties such as Christians only could imagine
Criminal whose guilt had been established by the hot iron
Criminals buying Paradise for money
Cruelties exercised upon monks and papists
Crusades made great improvement in the condition of the serfs
Culpable audacity and exaggerated prudence
Customary oaths, to be kept with the customary conscientiousness
Daily widening schism between Lutherans and Calvinists
Deadliest of sins, the liberty of conscience
Deadly hatred of Puritans in England and Holland
Deal with his enemy as if sure to become his friend
Death rather than life with a false acknowledgment of guilt
Decline a bribe or interfere with the private sale of places
Decrees for burning, strangling, and burying alive
Deeply criminal in the eyes of all religious parties
Defeated garrison ever deserved more respect from friend or foe
Defect of enjoying the flattery, of his inferiors in station
Delay often fights better than an army against a foreign invader
Demanding peace and bread at any price
Democratic instincts of the ancient German savages
Denies the utility of prayers for the dead
Denoungced as an obstacle to peace
Depths theological party spirit could descend
Depths of credulity men in all ages can sink
Despised those who were grateful
Despot by birth and inclination (Charles V.)
Determined to bring the very name of liberty into contempt
Devote himself to his gout and to his fair young wife
Difference between liberties and liberty
Difficult for one friend to advise another in three matters
Diplomacy of Spain and Rome--meant simply dissimulation
Diplomatic adroitness consists mainly in the power to deceive
Disciple of Simon Stevinus
Dismay of our friends and the gratification of our enemies
Disordered, and unknit state needs no shaking, but propping
Disposed to throat-cutting by the ministers of the Gospel
Dispute between Luther and Zwingli concerning the real presence
Disputing the eternal damnation of young children
Dissenters were as bigoted as the orthodox
Dissimulation and delay
Distinguished for his courage, his cruelty, and his corpulence
Divine right of kings
Divine right
Do you want peace or war? I am ready for either
Doctrine of predestination in its sternest and strictest sense
Don John of Austria
Don John was at liberty to be King of England and Scotland
Done nothing so long as aught remained to do
Drank of the water in which, he had washed
Draw a profit out of the necessities of this state
During this, whole war, we have never seen the like
Dying at so very inconvenient a moment
Each in its turn becoming orthodox, and therefore persecuting
Eat their own children than to forego one high mass
Eight thousand human beings were murdered
Elizabeth, though convicted, could always confute
Elizabeth (had not) the faintest idea of religious freedom
Eloquence of the biggest guns
Emperor of Japan addressed him as his brother monarch
Emulation is not capability
Endure every hardship but hunger
Enemy of all compulsion of the human conscience
England hated the Netherlands
English Puritans
Englishmen and Hollanders preparing to cut each other's throats
Enmity between Lutherans and Calvinists
Enormous wealth (of the Church) which engendered the hatred
Enriched generation after generation by wealthy penitence
Enthusiasm could not supply the place of experience
Envying those whose sufferings had already been terminated
Epernon, the true murderer of Henry
Erasmus of Rotterdam
Erasmus encourages the bold friar
Establish not freedom for Calvinism, but freedom for conscience
Estimating his character and judging his judges
Even the virtues of James were his worst enemies
Even to grant it slowly is to deny it utterly
Even for the rape of God's mother, if that were possible
Ever met disaster with so cheerful a smile
Ever-swarming nurseries of mercenary warriors
Every one sees what you seem, few perceive what you are
Everybody should mind his own business
Everything else may happen This alone must happen
Everything was conceded, but nothing was secured
Evil is coming, the sooner it arrives the better
Evil has the advantage of rapidly assuming many shapes
Excited with the appearance of a gem of true philosophy
Excused by their admirers for their shortcomings
Excuses to disarm the criticism he had some reason to fear
Executions of Huss and Jerome of Prague
Exorcising the devil by murdering his supposed victims
Extraordinary capacity for yielding to gentle violence
Fable of divine right is invented to sanction the system
Faction has rarely worn a more mischievous aspect
Famous fowl in every pot
Fanatics of the new religion denounced him as a godless man
Fate, free will, or absolute foreknowledge
Father Cotton, who was only too ready to betray the secrets
Fear of the laugh of the world at its sincerity
Fed on bear's liver, were nearly poisoned to death
Felix Mants, the anabaptist, is drowned at Zurich
Fellow worms had been writhing for half a century in the dust
Ferocity which even Christians could not have surpassed
Few, even prelates were very dutiful to the pope
Fiction of apostolic authority to bind and loose
Fifty thousand persons in the provinces (put to death)
Financial opposition to tyranny is apt to be unanimous
Find our destruction in our immoderate desire for peace
Fishermen and river raftsmen become ocean adventurers
Fitted "To warn, to comfort, and command"
Fitter to obey than to command
Five great rivers hold the Netherland territory in their coils
Flattery is a sweet and intoxicating potion
Fled from the land of oppression to the land of liberty
Fool who useth not wit because he hath it not
For myself I am unworthy of the honor (of martyrdom)
For faithful service, evil recompense
For women to lament, for men to remember
For us, looking back upon the Past, which was then the Future
For his humanity towards the conquered garrisons (censured)
Forbidding the wearing of mourning at all
Forbids all private assemblies for devotion
Force clerical--the power of clerks
Foremost to shake off the fetters of superstition
Forget those who have done them good service
Forgiving spirit on the part of the malefactor
Fortune's buffets and rewards can take with equal thanks
Four weeks' holiday--the first in eleven years
France was mourning Henry and waiting for Richelieu
French seem madmen, and are wise
Friendly advice still more intolerable
Full of precedents and declamatory commonplaces
Furious fanaticism
Furious mob set upon the house of Rem Bischop
Furnished, in addition, with a force of two thousand prostitutes
Future world as laid down by rival priesthoods
Gallant and ill-fated Lamoral Egmont
Gaul derided the Roman soldiers as a band of pigmies
German-Lutheran sixteenth-century idea of religious freedom
German finds himself sober--he believes himself ill
German Highland and the German Netherland
Gigantic vices are proudly pointed to as the noblest
Give him advice if he asked it, and money when he required
Glory could be put neither into pocket nor stomach
God has given absolute power to no mortal man
God, whose cause it was, would be pleased to give good weather
God alone can protect us against those whom we trust
God of wrath who had decreed the extermination of all unbeliever
God of vengeance, of jealousy, and of injustice
God Save the King! It was the last time
Gold was the only passkey to justice
Gomarites accused the Arminians of being more lax than Papists
Govern under the appearance of obeying
Great transactions of a reign are sometimes paltry things
Great science of political equilibrium
Great Privilege, the Magna Charta of Holland
Great error of despising their enemy
Great war of religion and politics was postponed
Great battles often leave the world where they found it
Guarantees of forgiveness for every imaginable sin
Guilty of no other crime than adhesion to the Catholic faith
Habeas corpus
Had industry been honoured instead of being despised
Haereticis non servanda fides
Hair and beard unshorn, according to ancient Batavian custom
Halcyon days of ban, book and candle
Hanged for having eaten meat-soup upon Friday
Hanging of Mary Dyer at Boston
Hangman is not the most appropriate teacher of religion
Happy to glass themselves in so brilliant a mirror
Hard at work, pouring sand through their sieves
Hardly a distinguished family in Spain not placed in mourning
Hardly a sound Protestant policy anywhere but in Holland
Hardly an inch of French soil that had not two possessors
Having conjugated his paradigm conscientiously
He had omitted to execute heretics
He did his best to be friends with all the world
He was a sincere bigot
He that stands let him see that he does not fall
He was not always careful in the construction of his sentences
He would have no persecution of the opposite creed
He came as a conqueror not as a mediator
He who spreads the snare always tumbles into the ditch himself
He who would have all may easily lose all
He knew men, especially he knew their weaknesses
He had never enjoyed social converse, except at long intervals
He would have no Calvinist inquisition set up in its place
He who confessed well was absolved well
He did his work, but he had not his reward
He sat a great while at a time. He had a genius for sitting
He was not imperial of aspect on canvas or coin
He often spoke of popular rights with contempt
He spent more time at table than the Bearnese in sleep
Heidelberg Catechism were declared to be infallible
Henry the Huguenot as the champion of the Council of Trent
Her teeth black, her bosom white and liberally exposed (Eliz.)
Heresy was a plant of early growth in the Netherlands
Heretics to the English Church were persecuted
Hibernian mode of expressing himself
High officers were doing the work of private, soldiers
Highborn demagogues in that as in every age affect adulation
Highest were not necessarily the least slimy
His inordinate arrogance
His own past triumphs seemed now his greatest enemies
His imagination may have assisted his memory in the task
His insolence intolerable
His learning was a reproach to the ignorant
His invectives were, however, much stronger than his arguments
His personal graces, for the moment, took the rank of virtues
His dogged, continuous capacity for work
Historical scepticism may shut its eyes to evidence
History is a continuous whole of which we see only fragments
History is but made up of a few scattered fragments
History never forgets and never forgives
History has not too many really important and emblematic men
History shows how feeble are barriers of paper
Holland was afraid to give a part, although offering the whole
Holland, England, and America, are all links of one chain
Holy Office condemned all the inhabitants of the Netherlands
Holy institution called the Inquisition
Honor good patriots, and to support them in venial errors
Hope delayed was but a cold and meagre consolation
Hope deferred, suddenly changing to despair
How many more injured by becoming bad copies of a bad ideal
Hugo Grotius
Human nature in its meanness and shame
Human ingenuity to inflict human misery
Human fat esteemed the sovereignst remedy (for wounds)
Humanizing effect of science upon the barbarism of war
Humble ignorance as the safest creed
Humility which was but the cloak to his pride
Hundred thousand men had laid down their lives by her decree
I did never see any man behave himself as he did
I know how to console myself
I am a king that will be ever known not to fear any but God
I hope and I fear
I would carry the wood to burn my own son withal
I regard my country's profit, not my own
I will never live, to see the end of my poverty
Idea of freedom in commerce has dawned upon nations
Idiotic principle of sumptuary legislation
Idle, listless, dice-playing, begging, filching vagabonds
If he had little, he could live upon little
If to do be as grand as to imagine what it were good to do
If he has deserved it, let them strike off his head
Ignoble facts which strew the highways of political life
Ignorance is the real enslaver of mankind
Imagined, and did the work of truth
Imagining that they held the world's destiny in their hands
Impatience is often on the part of the non-combatants
Implication there was much, of assertion very little
Imposed upon the multitudes, with whom words were things
Impossible it is to practise arithmetic with disturbed brains
Impossible it was to invent terms of adulation too gross
In revolutions the men who win are those who are in earnest
In character and general talents he was beneath mediocrity
In times of civil war, to be neutral is to be nothing
In Holland, the clergy had neither influence nor seats
In this he was much behind his age or before it
Incur the risk of being charged with forwardness than neglect
Indecision did the work of indolence
Indignant that heretics had been suffered to hang
Individuals walking in advance of their age
Indoor home life imprisons them in the domestic circle
Indulging them frequently with oracular advice
Inevitable fate of talking castles and listening ladies
Infamy of diplomacy, when diplomacy is unaccompanied by honesty
Infinite capacity for pecuniary absorption
Informer, in case of conviction, should be entitled to one half
Inhabited by the savage tribes called Samoyedes
Innocent generation, to atone for the sins of their forefathers
Inquisition of the Netherlands is much more pitiless
Inquisition was not a fit subject for a compromise
Inquisitors enough; but there were no light vessels in The Armada
Insane cruelty, both in the cause of the Wrong and the Right
Insensible to contumely, and incapable of accepting a rebuff
Insinuate that his orders had been hitherto misunderstood
Insinuating suspicions when unable to furnish evidence
Intellectual dandyisms of Bulwer
Intelligence, science, and industry were accounted degrading
Intense bigotry of conviction
Intentions of a government which did not know its own intentions
International friendship, the self-interest of each
Intolerable tendency to puns
Invaluable gift which no human being can acquire, authority
Invented such Christian formulas as these (a curse)
Inventing long speeches for historical characters
Invincible Armada had not only been vanquished but annihilated
Irresistible force in collision with an insuperable resistance
It was the true religion, and there was none other
It is not desirable to disturb much of that learned dust
It had not yet occurred to him that he was married
It is n't strategists that are wanted so much as believers
It is certain that the English hate us (Sully)
Its humility, seemed sufficiently ironical
James of England, who admired, envied, and hated Henry
Jealousy, that potent principle
Jesuit Mariana--justifying the killing of excommunicated kings
John Castel, who had stabbed Henry IV.
John Wier, a physician of Grave
John Robinson
John Quincy Adams
Judas Maccabaeus
July 1st, two Augustine monks were burned at Brussels
Justified themselves in a solemn consumption of time
Kindly shadow of oblivion
King who thought it furious madness to resist the enemy
King had issued a general repudiation of his debts
King set a price upon his head as a rebel
King of Zion to be pinched to death with red-hot tongs
King was often to be something much less or much worse
King's definite and final intentions, varied from day to day
Labored under the disadvantage of never having existed
Labour was esteemed dishonourable
Language which is ever living because it is dead
Languor of fatigue, rather than any sincere desire for peace
Leading motive with all was supposed to be religion
Learn to tremble as little at priestcraft as at swordcraft
Leave not a single man alive in the city, and to burn every house
Let us fool these poor creatures to their heart's content
Licences accorded by the crown to carry slaves to America
Life of nations and which we call the Past
Like a man holding a wolf by the ears
Little army of Maurice was becoming the model for Europe
Little grievances would sometimes inflame more than vast
Local self-government which is the life-blood of liberty
Logic of the largest battalions
Logic is rarely the quality on which kings pride themselves
Logical and historical argument of unmerciful length
Long succession of so many illustrious obscure
Longer they delay it, the less easy will they find it
Look through the cloud of dissimulation
Look for a sharp war, or a miserable peace
Looking down upon her struggle with benevolent indifference
Lord was better pleased with adverbs than nouns
Loud, nasal, dictatorial tone, not at all agreeable
Louis XIII.
Loving only the persons who flattered him
Ludicrous gravity
Luther's axiom, that thoughts are toll-free
Lutheran princes of Germany, detested the doctrines of Geneva
Luxury had blunted the fine instincts of patriotism
Made peace--and had been at war ever since
Made no breach in royal and Roman infallibility
Made to swing to and fro over a slow fire
Magistracy at that moment seemed to mean the sword
Magnificent hopefulness
Maintaining the attitude of an injured but forgiving Christian
Make sheep of yourselves, and the wolf will eat you
Make the very name of man a term of reproach
Man is never so convinced of his own wisdom
Man who cannot dissemble is unfit to reign
Man had only natural wrongs (No natural rights)
Man had no rights at all He was property
Mankind were naturally inclined to calumny
Manner in which an insult shall be dealt with
Many greedy priests, of lower rank, had turned shop-keepers
Maritime heretics
Matter that men may rather pray for than hope for
Matters little by what name a government is called
Meantime the second civil war in France had broken out
Mediocrity is at a premium
Meet around a green table except as fencers in the field
Men were loud in reproof, who had been silent
Men fought as if war was the normal condition of humanity
Men who meant what they said and said what they meant
Mendacity may always obtain over innocence and credulity
Military virtue in the support of an infamous cause
Misanthropical, sceptical philosopher
Misery had come not from their being enemies
Mistake to stumble a second time over the same stone
Mistakes might occur from occasional deviations into sincerity
Mockery of negotiation in which nothing could be negotiated
Modern statesmanship, even while it practises, condemns
Monasteries, burned their invaluable libraries
Mondragon was now ninety-two years old
Moral nature, undergoes less change than might be hoped
More accustomed to do well than to speak well
More easily, as he had no intention of keeping the promise
More catholic than the pope
More fiercely opposed to each other than to Papists
More apprehension of fraud than of force
Most detestable verses that even he had ever composed
Most entirely truthful child he had ever seen
Motley was twice sacrificed to personal feelings
Much as the blind or the deaf towards colour or music
Myself seeing of it methinketh that I dream
Names history has often found it convenient to mark its epochs
National character, not the work of a few individuals
Nations tied to the pinafores of children in the nursery
Natural to judge only by the result
Natural tendency to suspicion of a timid man
Nearsighted liberalism
Necessary to make a virtue of necessity
Necessity of extirpating heresy, root and branch
Necessity of deferring to powerful sovereigns
Necessity of kingship
Negotiated as if they were all immortal
Neighbour's blazing roof was likely soon to fire their own
Neither kings nor governments are apt to value logic
Neither wished the convocation, while both affected an eagerness
Neither ambitious nor greedy
Never peace well made, he observed, without a mighty war
Never did statesmen know better how not to do
Never lack of fishers in troubled waters
New Years Day in England, 11th January by the New Style
Night brings counsel
Nine syllables that which could be more forcibly expressed in on
No one can testify but a householder
No man can be neutral in civil contentions
No law but the law of the longest purse
No two books, as he said, ever injured each other
No retrenchments in his pleasures of women, dogs, and buildings
No great man can reach the highest position in our government
No man is safe (from news reporters)
No man could reveal secrets which he did not know
No authority over an army which they did not pay
No man pretended to think of the State
No synod had a right to claim Netherlanders as slaves
No qualities whatever but birth and audacity to recommend him
No generation is long-lived enough to reap the harvest
No man ever understood the art of bribery more thoroughly
No calumny was too senseless to be invented
None but God to compel me to say more than I choose to say
Nor is the spirit of the age to be pleaded in defence
Not a friend of giving details larger than my ascertained facts
Not distinguished for their docility
Not to let the grass grow under their feet
Not a single acquaintance in the place, and we glory in the fact
Not safe for politicians to call each other hard names
Not his custom nor that of his councillors to go to bed
Not of the genus Reptilia, and could neither creep nor crouch
Not strong enough to sustain many more such victories
Not to fall asleep in the shade of a peace negotiation
Not many more than two hundred Catholics were executed
Not upon words but upon actions
Not for a new doctrine, but for liberty of conscience
Not of the stuff of which martyrs are made (Erasmus)
Not so successful as he was picturesque
Nothing could equal Alexander's fidelity, but his perfidy
Nothing cheap, said a citizen bitterly, but sermons
Nothing was so powerful as religious difference
Notre Dame at Antwerp
Nowhere was the persecution of heretics more relentless
Nowhere were so few unproductive consumers
O God! what does man come to!
Obscure were thought capable of dying natural deaths
Obstinate, of both sexes, to be burned
Octogenarian was past work and past mischief
Of high rank but of lamentably low capacity
Often much tyranny in democracy
Often necessary to be blind and deaf
Oldenbarneveld; afterwards so illustrious
On the first day four thousand men and women were slaughtered
One-half to Philip and one-half to the Pope and Venice (slaves)
One-third of Philip's effective navy was thus destroyed
One golden grain of wit into a sheet of infinite platitude
One could neither cry nor laugh within the Spanish dominions
One of the most contemptible and mischievous of kings (James I)
Only healthy existence of the French was in a state of war
Only true religion
Only citadel against a tyrant and a conqueror was distrust
Only kept alive by milk, which he drank from a woman's breast
Only foundation fit for history,--original contemporary document
Opening an abyss between government and people
Opposed the subjection of the magistracy by the priesthood
Oration, fertile in rhetoric and barren in facts
Orator was, however, delighted with his own performance
Others that do nothing, do all, and have all the thanks
Others go to battle, says the historian, these go to war
Our pot had not gone to the fire as often
Our mortal life is but a string of guesses at the future
Outdoing himself in dogmatism and inconsistency
Over excited, when his prejudices were roughly handled
Panegyrists of royal houses in the sixteenth century
Pardon for crimes already committed, or about to be committed
Pardon for murder, if not by poison, was cheaper
Partisans wanted not accommodation but victory
Party hatred was not yet glutted with the blood it had drunk
Passion is a bad schoolmistress for the memory
Past was once the Present, and once the Future
Pathetic dying words of Anne Boleyn
Patriotism seemed an unimaginable idea
Pauper client who dreamed of justice at the hands of law
Paving the way towards atheism (by toleration)
Paying their passage through, purgatory
Peace founded on the only secure basis, equality of strength
Peace was desirable, it might be more dangerous than war
Peace seemed only a process for arriving at war
Peace and quietness is brought into a most dangerous estate
Peace-at-any-price party
Peace, in reality, was war in its worst shape
Peace was unattainable, war was impossible, truce was inevitable
Peace would be destruction
Perfection of insolence
Perpetually dropping small innuendos like pebbles
Persons who discussed religious matters were to be put to death
Petty passion for contemptible details
Philip II. gave the world work enough
Philip of Macedon, who considered no city impregnable
Philip IV.
Philip, who did not often say a great deal in a few words
Picturesqueness of crime
Placid unconsciousness on his part of defeat
Plain enough that he is telling his own story
Planted the inquisition in the Netherlands
Played so long with other men's characters and good name
Plea of infallibility and of authority soon becomes ridiculous
Plundering the country which they came to protect
Poisoning, for example, was absolved for eleven ducats
Pope excommunicated him as a heretic
Pope and emperor maintain both positions with equal logic
Portion of these revenues savoured much of black-mail
Possible to do, only because we see that it has been done
Pot-valiant hero
Power the poison of which it is so difficult to resist
Power to read and write helped the clergy to much wealth
Power grudged rather than given to the deputies
Practised successfully the talent of silence
Pray here for satiety, (said Cecil) than ever think of variety
Preferred an open enemy to a treacherous protector
Premature zeal was prejudicial to the cause
Presents of considerable sums of money to the negotiators made
Presumption in entitling themselves Christian
Preventing wrong, or violence, even towards an enemy
Priests shall control the state or the state govern the priests
Princes show what they have in them at twenty-five or never
Prisoners were immediately hanged
Privileged to beg, because ashamed to work
Proceeds of his permission to eat meat on Fridays
Proclaiming the virginity of the Virgin's mother
Procrastination was always his first refuge
Progress should be by a spiral movement
Promises which he knew to be binding only upon the weak
Proposition made by the wolves to the sheep, in the fable
Protect the common tranquillity by blood, purse, and life
Provided not one Huguenot be left alive in France
Public which must have a slain reputation to devour
Purchased absolution for crime and smoothed a pathway to heaven
Puritanism in Holland was a very different thing from England
Put all those to the torture out of whom anything can be got
Putting the cart before the oxen
Queen is entirely in the hands of Spain and the priests
Questioning nothing, doubting nothing, fearing nothing
Quite mistaken: in supposing himself the Emperor's child
Radical, one who would uproot, is a man whose trade is dangerous
Rarely able to command, having never learned to obey
Rashness alternating with hesitation
Rather a wilderness to reign over than a single heretic
Readiness to strike and bleed at any moment in her cause
Readiness at any moment to defend dearly won liberties
Rearing gorgeous temples where paupers are to kneel
Reasonable to pay our debts rather than to repudiate them
Rebuked him for his obedience
Rebuked the bigotry which had already grown
Recall of a foreign minister for alleged misconduct in office
Reformer who becomes in his turn a bigot is doubly odious
Reformers were capable of giving a lesson even to inquisitors
Religion was made the strumpet of Political Ambition
Religion was rapidly ceasing to be the line of demarcation
Religion was not to be changed like a shirt
Religious toleration, which is a phrase of insult
Religious persecution of Protestants by Protestants
Repentance, as usual, had come many hours too late
Repentant males to be executed with the sword
Repentant females to be buried alive
Repose under one despot guaranteed to them by two others
Repose in the other world, "Repos ailleurs"
Republic, which lasted two centuries
Republics are said to be ungrateful
Repudiation of national debts was never heard of before
Requires less mention than Philip III himself
Resolve to maintain the civil authority over the military
Resolved thenceforth to adopt a system of ignorance
Respect for differences in religious opinions
Result was both to abandon the provinces and to offend Philip
Revocable benefices or feuds
Rich enough to be worth robbing
Righteous to kill their own children
Road to Paris lay through the gates of Rome
Rose superior to his doom and took captivity captive
Round game of deception, in which nobody was deceived
Royal plans should be enforced adequately or abandoned entirely
Ruinous honors
Rules adopted in regard to pretenders to crowns
Sacked and drowned ten infant princes
Sacrificed by the Queen for faithfully obeying her orders
Safest citadel against an invader and a tyrant is distrust
Sages of every generation, read the future like a printed scroll
Saint Bartholomew's day
Sale of absolutions was the source of large fortunes to the priests
Same conjury over ignorant baron and cowardly hind
Scaffold was the sole refuge from the rack
Scepticism, which delights in reversing the judgment of centuries
Schism in the Church had become a public fact
Schism which existed in the general Reformed Church
Science of reigning was the science of lying
Scoffing at the ceremonies and sacraments of the Church
Secret drowning was substituted for public burning
Secure the prizes of war without the troubles and dangers
Security is dangerous
Seeking protection for and against the people
Seem as if born to make the idea of royalty ridiculous
Seemed bent on self-destruction
Seems but a change of masks, of costume, of phraseology
Sees the past in the pitiless light of the present
Self-assertion--the healthful but not engaging attribute
Self-educated man, as he had been a self-taught boy
Selling the privilege of eating eggs upon fast-days
Senectus edam maorbus est
Sent them word by carrier pigeons
Sentiment of Christian self-complacency
Sentimentality that seems highly apocryphal
Served at their banquets by hosts of lackeys on their knees
Seven Spaniards were killed, and seven thousand rebels
Sewers which have ever run beneath decorous Christendom
Shall Slavery die, or the great Republic?
Sharpened the punishment for reading the scriptures in private
She relieth on a hope that will deceive her
She declined to be his procuress
She knew too well how women were treated in that country
Shift the mantle of religion from one shoulder to the other
Shutting the stable-door when the steed is stolen
Sick soldiers captured on the water should be hanged
Sick and wounded wretches were burned over slow fires
Simple truth was highest skill
Sixteen of their best ships had been sacrificed
Slain four hundred and ten men with his own hand
Slavery was both voluntary and compulsory
Slender stock of platitudes
Small matter which human folly had dilated into a great one
Smooth words, in the plentiful lack of any substantial
So much responsibility and so little power
So often degenerated into tyranny (Calvinism)
So much in advance of his time as to favor religious equality
So unconscious of her strength
Soldier of the cross was free upon his return
Soldiers enough to animate the good and terrify the bad
Solitary and morose, the necessary consequence of reckless study
Some rude lessons from that vigorous little commonwealth
Sometimes successful, even although founded upon sincerity
Sonnets of Petrarch
Sovereignty was heaven-born, anointed of God
Spain was governed by an established terrorism
Spaniards seem wise, and are madmen
Sparing and war have no affinity together
Spendthrift of time, he was an economist of blood
Spirit of a man who wishes to be proud of his country
St. Peter's dome rising a little nearer to the clouds
St. Bartholomew was to sleep for seven years longer
Stake or gallows (for) heretics to transubstantiation
Stand between hope and fear
State can best defend religion by letting it alone
States were justified in their almost unlimited distrust
Steeped to the lips in sloth which imagined itself to be pride
Storm by which all these treasures were destroyed (in 7 days)
Strangled his nineteen brothers on his accession
Strength does a falsehood acquire in determined and skilful hand
String of homely proverbs worthy of Sancho Panza
Stroke of a broken table knife sharpened on a carriage wheel
Studied according to his inclinations rather than by rule
Style above all other qualities seems to embalm for posterity
Subtle and dangerous enemy who wore the mask of a friend
Succeeded so well, and had been requited so ill
Successful in this step, he is ready for greater ones
Such a crime as this had never been conceived (bankruptcy)
Such an excuse was as bad as the accusation
Suicide is confession
Superfluous sarcasm
Suppress the exercise of the Roman religion
Sure bind, sure find
Sword in hand is the best pen to write the conditions of peace
Take all their imaginations and extravagances for truths
Talked impatiently of the value of my time
Tanchelyn
Taxation upon sin
Taxed themselves as highly as fifty per cent
Taxes upon income and upon consumption
Tempest of passion and prejudice
Ten thousand two hundred and twenty individuals were burned
Tension now gave place to exhaustion
That vile and mischievous animal called the people
That crowned criminal, Philip the Second
That unholy trinity--Force; Dogma, and Ignorance
That cynical commerce in human lives
That he tries to lay the fault on us is pure malice
The tragedy of Don Carlos
The worst were encouraged with their good success
The history of the Netherlands is history of liberty
The great ocean was but a Spanish lake
The divine speciality of a few transitory mortals
The sapling was to become the tree
The nation which deliberately carves itself in pieces
The expenses of James's household
The Catholic League and the Protestant Union
The blaze of a hundred and fifty burning vessels
The magnitude of this wonderful sovereign's littleness
The defence of the civil authority against the priesthood
The assassin, tortured and torn by four horses
The Gaul was singularly unchaste
The vivifying becomes afterwards the dissolving principle
The bad Duke of Burgundy, Philip surnamed "the Good,"
The greatest crime, however, was to be rich
The more conclusive arbitration of gunpowder
The disunited provinces
The noblest and richest temple of the Netherlands was a wreck
The voice of slanderers
The calf is fat and must be killed
The illness was a convenient one
The egg had been laid by Erasmus, hatched by Luther
The perpetual reproductions of history
The very word toleration was to sound like an insult
The most thriving branch of national industry (Smuggler)
The pigmy, as the late queen had been fond of nicknaming him
The slightest theft was punished with the gallows
The art of ruling the world by doing nothing
The wisest statesmen are prone to blunder in affairs of war
The Alcoran was less cruel than the Inquisition
The People had not been invented
The small children diminished rapidly in numbers
The busy devil of petty economy
The record of our race is essentially unwritten
The truth in shortest about matters of importance
The time for reasoning had passed
The effect of energetic, uncompromising calumny
The evils resulting from a confederate system of government
The vehicle is often prized more than the freight
The faithful servant is always a perpetual ass
The dead men of the place are my intimate friends
The loss of hair, which brings on premature decay
The personal gifts which are nature's passport everywhere
The nation is as much bound to be honest as is the individual
The fellow mixes blood with his colors!
Their existence depended on war
Their own roofs were not quite yet in a blaze
Theological hatred was in full blaze throughout the country
Theology and politics were one
There is no man who does not desire to enjoy his own
There was but one king in Europe, Henry the Bearnese
There are few inventions in morals
There was no use in holding language of authority to him
There was apathy where there should have been enthusiasm
There is no man fitter for that purpose than myself
Therefore now denounced the man whom he had injured
These human victims, chained and burning at the stake
They had come to disbelieve in the mystery of kingcraft
They chose to compel no man's conscience
They could not invent or imagine toleration
They knew very little of us, and that little wrong
They have killed him, 'e ammazato,' cried Concini
They were always to deceive every one, upon every occasion
They liked not such divine right nor such gentle-mindedness
They had at last burned one more preacher alive
Things he could tell which are too odious and dreadful
Thirty thousand masses should be said for his soul
Thirty-three per cent. interest was paid (per month)
Thirty Years' War tread on the heels of the forty years
This Somebody may have been one whom we should call Nobody
This, then, is the reward of forty years' service to the State
This obstinate little republic
This wonderful sovereign's littleness oppresses the imagination
Those who fish in troubled waters only to fill their own nets
Those who "sought to swim between two waters"
Those who argue against a foregone conclusion
Thought that all was too little for him
Thousands of burned heretics had not made a single convert
Three hundred fighting women
Three hundred and upwards are hanged annually in London
Three or four hundred petty sovereigns (of Germany)
Throw the cat against their legs
Thus Hand-werpen, hand-throwing, became Antwerp
Time and myself are two
Tis pity he is not an Englishman
To think it capable of error, is the most devilish heresy of all
To stifle for ever the right of free enquiry
To attack England it was necessary to take the road of Ireland
To hear the last solemn commonplaces
To prefer poverty to the wealth attendant upon trade
To shirk labour, infinite numbers become priests and friars
To doubt the infallibility of Calvin was as heinous a crime
To negotiate with Government in England was to bribe
To milk, the cow as long as she would give milk
To work, ever to work, was the primary law of his nature
To negotiate was to bribe right and left, and at every step
To look down upon their inferior and lost fellow creatures
Toil and sacrifices of those who have preceded us
Tolerate another religion that his own may be tolerated
Tolerating religious liberty had never entered his mind
Toleration--that intolerable term of insult
Toleration thought the deadliest heresy of all
Torquemada's administration (of the inquisition)
Torturing, hanging, embowelling of men, women, and children
Tranquil insolence
Tranquillity rather of paralysis than of health
Tranquillity of despotism to the turbulence of freedom
Triple marriages between the respective nurseries
Trust her sword, not her enemy's word
Twas pity, he said, that both should be heretics
Twenty assaults upon fame and had forty books killed under him
Two witnesses sent him to the stake, one witness to the rack
Tyrannical spirit of Calvinism
Tyranny, ever young and ever old, constantly reproducing herself
Uncouple the dogs and let them run
Under the name of religion (so many crimes)
Understood the art of managing men, particularly his superiors
Undue anxiety for impartiality
Unduly dejected in adversity
Unequivocal policy of slave emancipation
Unimaginable outrage as the most legitimate industry
Universal suffrage was not dreamed of at that day
Unlearned their faith in bell, book, and candle
Unproductive consumption being accounted most sagacious
Unproductive consumption was alarmingly increasing
Unremitted intellectual labor in an honorable cause
Unwise impatience for peace
Upon their knees, served the queen with wine
Upon one day twenty-eight master cooks were dismissed
Upper and lower millstones of royal wrath and loyal subserviency
Use of the spade
Usual phraseology of enthusiasts
Usual expedient by which bad legislation on one side countered
Utter disproportions between the king's means and aims
Utter want of adaptation of his means to his ends
Uttering of my choler doth little ease my grief or help my case
Uunmeaning phrases of barren benignity
Vain belief that they were men at eighteen or twenty
Valour on the one side and discretion on the other
Villagers, or villeins
Visible atmosphere of power the poison of which
Volatile word was thought preferable to the permanent letter
Vows of an eternal friendship of several weeks' duration
Waiting the pleasure of a capricious and despotic woman
Walk up and down the earth and destroy his fellow-creatures
War was the normal and natural condition of mankind
War was the normal condition of Christians
War to compel the weakest to follow the religion of the strongest
Was it astonishing that murder was more common than fidelity?
Wasting time fruitlessly is sharpening the knife for himself
We were sold by their negligence who are now angry with us
We believe our mothers to have been honest women
We are beginning to be vexed
We must all die once
We have been talking a little bit of truth to each other
We have the reputation of being a good housewife
We mustn't tickle ourselves to make ourselves laugh
Wealth was an unpardonable sin
Wealthy Papists could obtain immunity by an enormous fine
Weapons
Weary of place without power
Weep oftener for her children than is the usual lot of mothers
Weight of a thousand years of error
What exchequer can accept chronic warfare and escape bankruptcy
What could save the House of Austria, the cause of Papacy
What was to be done in this world and believed as to the next
When persons of merit suffer without cause
When all was gone, they began to eat each other
When the abbot has dice in his pocket, the convent will play
Whether dead infants were hopelessly damned
Whether murders or stratagems, as if they were acts of virtue
Whether repentance could effect salvation
While one's friends urge moderation
Who the "people" exactly were
Who loved their possessions better than their creed
Whole revenue was pledged to pay the interest, on his debts
Whose mutual hatred was now artfully inflamed by partisans
William of Nassau, Prince of Orange
William Brewster
Wise and honest a man, although he be somewhat longsome
Wiser simply to satisfy himself
Wish to sell us the bear-skin before they have killed the bear
Wish to appear learned in matters of which they are ignorant
With something of feline and feminine duplicity
Wonder equally at human capacity to inflict and to endure misery
Wonders whether it has found its harbor or only lost its anchor
Word peace in Spanish mouths simply meant the Holy Inquisition
Word-mongers who, could clothe one shivering thought
Words are always interpreted to the disadvantage of the weak
Work of the aforesaid Puritans and a few Jesuits
World has rolled on to fresher fields of carnage and ruin
Worn crescents in their caps at Leyden
Worn nor caused to be worn the collar of the serf
Worship God according to the dictates of his conscience
Would not help to burn fifty or sixty thousand Netherlanders
Wrath of the Jesuits at this exercise of legal authority
Wrath of bigots on both sides
Wrath of that injured personage as he read such libellous truths
Wringing a dry cloth for drops of evidence
Write so illegibly or express himself so awkwardly
Writing letters full of injured innocence
Yes, there are wicked men about
Yesterday is the preceptor of To-morrow
You must show your teeth to the Spaniard