finest in existence. Every other church in Antwerp, and over the whole country, four hundred churches in all, shared the same fate.

Alarmed for the consequences of his tyrannic severity, but still determined to maintain it, Philip resorted to the sword; and in 1567, the Duke of Alva, with a veteran army of from ten to fifteen thousand men, and with almost sovereign power, arrived, from Spain, under the walls of Brussels. The cruelties of this monster would fill a volume; and his name is, to this day, held in detestation in the Netherlands, for the atrocities of which he and his council, called by the people the Bloody Tribunal, were guilty. This was the re-establishment of the inquisition in its most terrific form. Little distinction was made between the innocent and the guilty many wealthy merchants were dragged ten or twelve miles to trial, tied to a horse's tail: at Valenciennes, fifty-five citizens were executed in one day. Burning, hanging, beheading, and quartering, were common occurrences; some were drowned, for having been once present at Protestant worship; others put to the rack, to induce them to discover their associates; various modes of torture were resorted to, such as screwing the culprits into a machine, so as to produce the most exquisite agony; scorching them with hot irons; or tearing them asunder by means of horses; husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters,

were put to death for daring to afford each other a temporary shelter from the fury of the Spaniards; and the wretched people, driven to frenzy and despair, fled to perish in the woods and marshes. The whole extent of the Netherlands was one wide scene of carnage and ruin; and the savage Alva, after succeeding in extirpating, subduing, or driving into exile, the greater part of the Protestants, boasted that, during the six years of his power, he had caused the death of eighteen thou sand heretics by the hand of the executioner; about fifty per day! As many more individuals perished by the sword; and upwards of a hundred and twenty thousand of the most ingenious and industrious of the population, abandoned their native soil.

For these services Alva received a consecrated hat and sword from Rome! His lust of blood was only equalled by his appetite for gold; and this afflicted and miserable country was now regarded as so prostrate, that it would tamely endure the most grinding and rapacious taxation, as the final climax of injury and oppression. But if the cruel butchery that had followed the steps of this grim and marble-hearted tyrant, exasperated the remaining relatives of those that had been put to death, an exorbitant and ruinous taxation, from which none were exempt, was felt by all; and the final issue, after long and bloody wars, was the emancipation of the seven northern provinces from

the Spanish yoke, which they virtually threw off by the union of Utrecht, in 1579, under the guidance of the noble William, whom Alva had in vain sought to bring within his power; or he would, no doubt, have glutted his eyes with his execution, as he had already done with that of William's friend, Count Egmont, in the great square at Brussels. Spain, however, kept a malignant eye upon her most formidable foe; and after several failures, Balthasar Gerard, her last emissary, assassinated the Prince at Delft. Notwithstanding this calamity, the Dutch Republic struggled into existence; while the Belgic provinces, the wreck of what they had once been, were still destined to remain under the disastrous auspices of Spain.

The opulence of the cities of Brabant and Flanders, in the days of their glory, was without previous example in modern times; and nothing could exceed the magnificence of the dresses adorned with gold and diamonds, the splendour of the entertainments, and the pompous displays of wealth, that were common among the princely merchants of these trading towns. Mechlin,-though never like Bruges, or Antwerp, the queen of commerce,-on one occasion sent a deputation to the latter city, consisting of three hundred and twenty-six horsemen, richly attired in satin, with a profusion of gold and silver ornaments; and Brussels deputed three hundred and forty, as splendidly clad, attended by seven

huge triumphant chariots, and seventy-eight others of a smaller size; and this at a time when carriages were far from common. But now the inquisition, and the sword, had reduced this fine country to a wilderness; and in their train followed the ruin of commerce, with famine, disease, and even the ravages of beasts of prey, which seemed almost to have mistaken what were once the finest parts of the country, for the savage desert; for it is said that more than a hundred persons fell a prey to wolves and hungry dogs, almost under the very walls of Ghent.

After the death of Philip II, the Low Countries fell to his son-in-law, the Archduke Albert of Austria, in virtue of his marriage with the Infanta; but on his dying without issue in 1621, they reverted to Spain. In 1648, the United Provinces obtained a ratification of their independence, by the Treaty of Westphalia: and twenty years afterwards, Louis XIV., taking advantage of the weakness of Spain, compelled her, by his successes in Belgium, to make vast sacrifices of territory in the treaty of Aix la Chapelle; and had not England, Holland, and Sweden, combined in the Triple Alliance to throw up a barrier against the French monarch, the whole of the Spanish Netherlands would, in 1668, have been overwhelmed by his power. On the death of Charles II. of Spain, the war broke out which related to the Spanish succession, in

which were involved the claims of the grandson of Louis XIV. and of the Archduke Charles. The peace of Utrecht, in which this war terminated, in 1713, consigned these provinces to Austria; to secure whose dominion over them, and to prevent their falling under the power of France, had been the object of the armed confederacies of the reigns of William III. and Anne, of England. They were subsequently overrun, and conquered, by the arms of Louis XV; but were restored to Austria by the Congress of 1748. In 1792, the French Revolution deprived Austria of the sovereignty, and these provinces were decreed an integral part of the French Republic, under the name of Belgium. In 1793, this afflicted country, which has so often changed masters, was again almost entirely in possession of the Austrians; but in the following year, it was regained by the French, and was once more incorporated with France; under the power of which it remained till the triumph of the allies over Napoleon, placed in their hands the destinies of Europe; and in 1814, the Congress of Vienna erected Belgium and Holland into the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, under the government of William, Prince of Orange. This connexion lasted till 1830, when the revolution placed Leopold of Saxe Coburg on the throne of Belgium.