For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,
Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,
To stir men's blood: I only speak right on;

I tell you that which you yourselves do know,

Show you sweet Cæsar's wounds, poor, poor dumb mouths,
And bid them speak for me: but, were I Brutus,
And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony
Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue
In every wound of Cæsar that should move
The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny.

All. We'll mutiny.

First Citizen. We'll burn the house of Brutus.

Third Citizen. Away, then! come, seek the conspirators.

Antony. Yet hear me, countrymen; yet hear me speak.

All. Peace, ho! hear Antony, most noble Antony.

Antony. Why, friends, you go to do you know not what.

Wherein hath Cæsar thus deserv'd your loves?
Alas, you know not!-I must tell you, then.
You have forgot the will I told you of.

All. Most true;-the will!-let's stay, and hear the will.

Antony. Here is the will, and under Cæsar's seal. To every Roman citizen he gives,

To every several man, seventy-five drachmas.

Second Citizen. Most noble Cæsar!-we'll revenge his

death.

Third Citizen. O, royal Cæsar!

Antony. Hear me with patience.

All. Peace, ho!

Antony. Moreover, he hath left you all his walks, His private arbors, and new-planted orchards,

On this side Tiber; he hath left them you,

And to your heirs for ever, common pleasures,
To walk abroad, and recreate yourselves.
Here was a Cæsar! when comes such another?

First Citizen. Never, never!-Come, away, away! We'll burn his body in the holy place,

And with the brands fire the traitors' houses.

Take up the body.

Second Citizen. Go, fetch fire.

Third Citizen. Pluck down benches.

Fourth Citizen. Pluck down forms, windows, any

thing.

[Exeunt Citizens with the body.]

Antony. Now let it work. Mischief, thou art afoot, Take thou what course thou wilt!

Abridged.

The worth of a state, in the long run, is the worth of

the individuals composing it.

John Stuart Mill.

THE SIEGE OF LEYDEN

BY JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY

Motley was born and educated in America, but spent much of his life abroad, partly in study and travel, partly as minister, first to Austria and later to Great Britain. History was the passion of his life, especially Dutch history. For a long time he lived in Leyden that he might become the more familiar with its story. 1814 died in 1877]

[Born in

The prolonged resistance, in the sixteenth century, of the Dutch, to their Spanish enemies, forms one of the most heroic struggles in history. For eighty years, poor, brave, little Holland stood out against Spain, then the richest, strongest country in Europe. "It seemed," says William Elliot Griffis, "like a shepherd boy with sling and stones, going out to fight Goliath." Sixty Spanish forts surrounded the city of Leyden. Offers of pardons and rewards for those who would surrender were made by the King of Spain in vain. To keep up the courage of the people, the shrewd burgomaster caused bands of music to play in the streets. Finally the besieged inhabitants resorted to the desperate expedient of cutting their dikes in order that vessels sent to their rescue might reach them. "Better a drowned land than a lost land," they cried, and the saying has passed into a proverb. This siege is of peculiar interest to Americans, since, some years later, the Pilgrim fathers and their families who founded Massachusetts came to Leyden to take refuge from their persecutors in England. During the eleven years of their stay many a Pilgrim boy grew to manhood, thrilling with his Dutch playmates at the story of the old town's heroism, and doubtless being taken to the City Hall to see the stuffed pigeons that had carried precious messages during the siege. When the Pilgrims landed in the New World they did not forget their Dutch protectors, and the oldest street in New England (in Plymouth) and several churches, help keep alive the name of Leyden.

The besieged city was at its last gasp. Bread, maltcake, horse-flesh, had entirely disappeared; dogs, cats, rats, and other vermin, were esteemed luxuries. A small number of cows, kept as long as possible for their milk, still remained; but a few were killed from day to day and distributed in minute proportions, hardly sufficient to support life, among the famishing population. Starving wretches swarmed daily around the shambles where these cattle were slaughtered, contending for any morsel which might fall, and lapping eagerly the blood as it ran along the pavement; while the hides, chopped and boiled, were greedily devoured. Women and children, all day long, were seen searching gutters and dunghills for morsels of food, which they disputed fiercely with the famishing dogs. The green leaves were stripped from the trees, every living herb was converted into human food, but these expedients could not avert starvation. The daily mortality was frightful--infants starved to death; mothers dropped dead in the streets, with their dead children in their arms. In many a house the watchmen, in their rounds, found a whole family of corpses--father, mother, and children-side by side; for a disorder called the plague, naturally engendered of hardship and famine, now came, as if in kindness, to abridge the agony of the people. The pestilence stalked at noonday through the city, and the doomed inhabitants fell like grass beneath the scythe. From six thousand to eight thousand human

beings sank before this scourge alone; yet the people resolutely held out-women and men mutually encouraging one another to resist the entrance of their foreign foean evil more horrible than pest or famine.

The missives from Valdez, who saw more vividly than the besieged could do the uncertainty of his own position, now poured daily into the city, the enemy becoming more prodigal of his vows as he felt that the ocean might yet save the victims from his grasp. The inhabitants, in their ignorance, had gradually abandoned all hope of relief, but they spurned the summons to surrender. Leyden was sublime in its despair. A few murmurs were, however, heard at the steadfastness of the magistrates, and a dead body was placed at the door of the burgomaster, as a silent witness against his inflexibility. A party of the more faint-hearted even assailed the heroic Adrian Van der Werf with threats and reproaches as he passed through the streets. A crowd had gathered around him as he reached a triangular place in the center of the town, into which many of the principal streets emptied themselves, and upon one side of which stood the church of St. Pancras, with its high brick tower surmounted by two pointed turrets, and with two ancient lime-trees at its entrance. There stood the burgomaster, a tall, haggard, imposing figure, with dark visage and a tranquil but commanding eye. He waved his broad-leafed felt-hat for silence, and then exclaimed, in language which has been