Excerpt.....In the year 1574 A. D. spring made its joyous entry into the Netherlands at an unusually early date. The sky was blue, gnats sported in the sunshine, white butterflies alighted on the newly-opened yellow flowers, and beside one of the ... Read more

Excerpt.....In the year 1574 A. D. spring made its joyous entry into the Netherlands at an unusually early date. The sky was blue, gnats sported in the sunshine, white butterflies alighted on the newly-opened yellow flowers, and beside one of the numerous ditches intersecting the wide plain stood a stork, snapping at a fine frog; the poor fellow soon writhed in its enemy’s red beak. One gulp—the merry jumper vanished, and its murderer, flapping its wings, soared high into the air. On flew the bird over gardens filled with blossoming fruit-trees, trimly laid-out flower-beds, and gaily-painted arbors, across the frowning circlet of walls and towers that girdled the city, over narrow houses with high, pointed gables, and neat streets bordered with elm, poplar, linden and willow-trees, decked with the first green leaves of spring. At last it alighted on a lofty gable-roof, on whose ridge was its firmly-fastened nest. After generously giving up its prey to the little wife brooding over the eggs, it stood on one leg and gazed thoughtfully down upon the city, whose shining red tiles gleamed spick and span from the green velvet carpet of the meadows. The bird had known beautiful Leyden, the gem of Holland, for many a year, and was familiar with all the branches of the Rhine that divided the stately city into numerous islands, and over which arched as many stone bridges as there are days in five months of the year; but surely many changes had occurred here since the stork’s last departure for the south. Where were the citizens’ gay summer-houses and orchards, where the wooden frames on which the weavers used to stretch their dark and colored cloths? Whatever plant or work of human hands had risen, outside the city walls and towers to the height of a man’s breast, thus interrupting the uniformity of the plain, had vanished from the earth, and beyond, on the bird’s best hunting-grounds, brownish spots sown with black circles appeared among the green of the meadows. Late in October of the preceding year, just after the storks left the country, a Spanish army had encamped here, and a few hours before the return of the winged wanderers in the first opening days of spring, the besiegers retired without having accomplished their purpose. Less