public. Charmed with her youth and affability, the States, the soldiers, and citizens vied in showing attentions to the daughter of James; and no sooner had she reached the castle, than there was again a contention between the fleet, the garrison, and the musquetry, to render her military honours. During the banquet that succeeded, the impression was prolonged by the trumpets, which sounded like the heralds of victory. In reality, however, it was not beauty but patriotism that triumphed, and the States gloried in receiving with magnificence the daughter of a monarch, to whose predecessors their oppressed country had owed its preservation.

CHAPTER IV.

ELIZABETH'S BRIDAL TOUR THROUGH HOLLAND TO COLOGNE.-EMBARKATION ON THE RHINE.RECEPTION AT FRANKNETHAL AND HEIDELBERG.

In preparing for the reception of the Pearl of Britain, as by Scottish and German panegyrists Elizabeth had been designated, Maurice was sensible that it would be in vain to offer the attractions of the French or English capital: in reality, there was in Holland no court, that is, no circle of nobility and royalty, sufficiently prominent to give its peculiar impress to society. It was the characteristic feature of the commonwealth, that military and legislative talents obtained the first rank, and that precedency waited on desert. The camp was here the court, and military gradations supplied to

Maurice and his retainers the place of etiquette. With a sovereign contempt for luxury* * and effeminacy, he occasionally displayed gallantry and magnificence, when discarding his ordinary dress of woollen cloth, he assumed a Spanish habit, or a rich military uniform, the plume pendent from his hat, the chain suspended from his neck, and his gilt sword attached to his waistcoat by an embroidered girdle; of low stature, inclining to corpulence, fair complexion, light eyes, and a somewhat phlegmatic expression of countenance, Maurice was not unfrequently a cynical satirist of epicurism and foppery ;but he approached the blooming Elizabeth in his holiday dress, affected the gallantry of a cavalier, and by her was hailed as a hero.

A tournament would here have been misplaced: no tilting match, no mockery of battle, could be relished in a country which du

* Of this we have an example in the well-known anecdote, of his having invited the luxurious Lord Hay to dine upon two dishes, of which one was a boiled, the other a roasted pig.-Du Mourier.

ring fifty years had been the field of war, whose soil had been fertilized by the blood of he roes, and whose vital principle was the love of liberty and glory. In place of fictitious combats, Elizabeth delighted to explore each spot in which Maurice or his father had sustained the honour of their house and the interests of the Protestant cause against the navies and armies, and gold and cruelty of Spain, and her perfidious emissaries. She was never weary of listening to his details of the siege in which he had prevailed, of the heroism displayed by the women, the valour of the soldiers, the irresistible energy and enthusiasm of the people. In this mànner she unconsciously revealed the ardour of her own sentiments; and Maurice observed with pleasure that she possessed an aspiring mind, and by her courage, no less than her charms, was likely to give a powerful impulse to his nephew's character.

In the mean time the elector had departed alone, avowedly to have more leisure to visit Dort, which was the place of his mo

ther's nativity. From Flushing Elizabeth proceeded with the prince in his barge, leaving to her ladies the luxury of coaches. When arrived at Middleburgh, she lodged in the abbey, and attended public worship; but the observance of the Sunday did not preclude the indulgence of festivity, since she partook of a feast in the town-hall, at which eighty persons of distinction of either sex were present. The next day she had to receive the farewell of the veteran Lord Nottingham, who, with the Vice-Admiral, departed for England, not without a profusion of acknowledgments from Elizabeth, by whom he was entrusted with a letter to her father, evidently written under those feelings of diffidence, not unmixed with chagrin, which had been produced by his late capricious conduct.*

After the Admiral's departure, Elizabeth embarked with Prince Maurice for Wilhelm

*« SIRE, I know not any one so competent as "the Lord Admiral himself to do justice to the ex"traordinary courtesies with which I have been ho