History of Protestantism in the Netherlands - James Aitken Wylie

straight on through all the intricacies of his path,
making no compromise with falsehood, never
listening to the solicitations of self-interest, and
alive only to the voice of duty. Hence, too, that
unfaltering perseverance and undying hope that
upheld him in the darkest hour, and amid the most
terrible calamities, and made him confident of
ultimate victory where another would have
abandoned the conflict as hopeless.
William of Orange persevered and triumphed
where a Caesar or a Napoleon would have
despaired and been defeated. The man and the
country are alike: both are an epic. Supremely
tragic outwardly is the history of both. It is defeat
succeeding defeat; it is disaster heaped upon
disaster, and calamity piled upon calamity, till at
last there stands personified before us an Iliad of
woes. But by some marvellous touch, by some
transforming fiat, the whole scene is suddenly
changed: the blackness kindles into glorious light,
the roar of the tempest subsides into sweetest
music, and defeat grows into victory. The man we
had expected to see prostrate beneath the ban of
511