Philip having, on August 26, 1559, sailed from Flushing, Spainward, William's lifework properly began. At this date, his attitude has not developed, but stands as a block of marble a sculptor has chiseled enough to show a statue is intended, but not sufficiently to disclose the sculptor's purpose. One thing alone was definite and unalterable, to combat the introduction of the Inquisition and the extermination of the Protestant Netherlanders by aid from the Spanish soldiery. The first checkmate given Philip's nefarious scheme was when the States-General compelled his removal of the troops, though at this time William was still Catholic in religion and a loyal subject of Philip, being in no sense a revolutionist. He was easily the first citizen of the Netherlands; twenty-six years of age; not matured, but maturing; not faultless, but in process of being fashioned for a distinguished career of patriotism and catholicity. Our full selves bloom slowly. Our life is no mushroom, but a tree, and a tree requires long growth-periods. Orange was so. A grave, moral, and patriotic purpose in itself suffices to shape a career of grandeur and service. Had he been told he would die a Protestant and a rebel, he would have been instant to deny the charge, and this through no duplicity, but from lack of knowledge of his own soul temper, coupled with an inability to forecast a stormy future. We can not walk by sight in action and politics any more than in religion--a thing the prince found out as the turbulent years passed. He has been vehemently accused of duplicity. He has been depicted as hypocrite and plotter against his rightful sovereign. I find no marks of this on him. That he had ambition is not to be argued; but ambition is no sin if worthily directed. He did things not consonant with our ethics, belonging, in that sense, to his age, an age of diplomatic duplicity. He did not tell all he knew. He had in his pay the king's private secretary, and received a copy of any letter the king wrote; and when at last the secretary's treason was discovered, he paid the penalty of his perfidy by being torn in pieces by four horses; yet bribery of employees was common then, and was a practice of every potentate, and was what Philip did in every court in Christendom. Absolute fealty was all but unknown. Each man was believed to have his price, and the belief, in most instances, was not erroneous. Besides, William was in a state of perpetual war with Philip, and war makes its own code, and justifies the otherwise unjustifiable, and but for this subtle surveillance of the king's intention, no stand could have been made against his treachery and encroachments; for he was the sum of duplicities, deceiving everybody, those nearest to him and most intimately in his counsels no less than his foes. Duplicity was native to him as respiration. Granvelle, who in treacherous diplomacy was not inferior to Macchiavelli, him Philip deceived. Such a king, William met by finesse and deception against finesse and deception. To judge a statesman of the sixteenth century by the ethics of the nineteenth century is studied injustice. He is accused of evasion in his marriage with Anne of Saxony, and the accusation is, in my conviction, just; but probably at that juncture in his career his religious notions were in a state of ferment, himself as yet knowing not what he would be. In any case, however, to use the words of Putnam, "From the expediency of his youth he grew gradually to a high standard of honor." In the stress of the battle for liberty, when he was reduced to counting his very garments, his luxurious habits slipped from him, and disinterestedness grew upon him. Cromwell was formed when first we saw him; Orange grows before our eyes, as we have watched the blooming of some sacred flower. Orange was no saint. Who so thinks him, thinks amiss. He had manifold faults, as what man has not? But that the growing purpose of his life was heroic and single, and that he devoted a laborious manhood to the enfranchisement of his country and religion, no fair historian can deny. His career naturally oscillated between the general and the statesman, the statesman being in the ascendant. Some men are primarily soldiers; secondarily, statesmen; as was Sulla or Marlborough. In others, the statesman stands first, the soldier in them being second, as in Julius Caesar, whose widest achievements always spring out of his statesmanship as naturally as a plant out of the soil. At this point, Caesar and William the Silent touch, by which is not meant that in either field William approximates Caesar; for Julius Caesar is one of the few greatest products of the world. William fought because he must; he was statesman because he would.