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    With his more affable and popular father , Chetrtes V , ; and the praises of Count Egmont are rang for his bravery at Graveling and St . Quintin ; for his joviality and munificence ; and as the best shot in the city . The scene then changes to the closet of the Princess Margaret of Parma , regent of the Netherlands . She is in consultation with her secretary , Machiavel . She appears as

    a humane person alarmed at the progress of the Reformation and spread of the principles of liberty , and conscientiously resolved to suppress both , in obedience to the injunctions of the king . The secretary puts in a few words in favour of the people , and recommends toleration , which the princess will not listen to . She adverts to the resistance to be apprehended from the nobles , and sagaciously remarks that she fears Orange , and fears for Egmont ,

    against whom she brings no worse charge than indifference and levity , and does not deny him the loyalty and integrity which the secretary praises him for . We are then taken back to humble life , and are introduced to Egmont ' s mistress , Clara . She is with her mother and her humble and rejected suitor , the mechanic Brackenburg . The feelings of Clara towards Egmont are rather devotion than love , pride and exultation that so glorious a hero should condescend to love so low a creature as herself : her

    character is one of the most successful Goethe has ever drawn . Act II . commences with another popular scene , a sort of Spafields meeting , in the market-place of Brussels . The worthy citizens , including the class of the ten-pounders , and those immediately below them , discuss , coolly enough , the sad news of the Flemish insurgents and iconoclasts—the carpenter and soapboiler , by no means radicals , but loyal subjects , who give vent to

    their indignation at the attack on the bishops by the Calvinists , when their party is joined by Vansen , an agitator . Though the people are reminded that he is a runaway lawyer ' s clerk , and a tippler to boot , yet , as he has the reputation of being a scholar , and tells them of their rights and privileges , and , in fact , is in the right in all he says , he soon has a party on his side , and a regular scuffle takes place , which is interrupted by the appearance of the

    popular hero . The count appeases the tumult at once ; admonishes the people to be firm against the foreign doctrine , and not to suppose that they can strengthen their privileges by sedition : in short , he is but a kind-hearted conservative Whig , after all . Nevertheless , when he is gone , Jetter , the melancholy tailor , remarks , that his handsome neck would be a tit-bit for the axe . The full development of Egmont ' s character takes place in the

    following business-scene with his secretary , who has his instructions to take from him as governor of one of the provinces . These all breathe the same spirit of generous forbearance towards the rebels ; sympathy with the lower classes ; and indifference towards the personal consequences of his actions . In reply to the warnings of his humble friend , he exclaims , ' The steeds of time * are scourged by invisible spirits , as they drive , us on in the lig ht

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    S 14 &oeihe * dWorti * .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1832, page 514, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1818/page/10/