510 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
the United Netherlands from the Death of William the Silent to the 
Twelve Years’ Truce, 1609.” If of less riveting interest than the 
former work, these volumes were welcomed as of high historical 
value, and fully sustained the author’s reputation. At the date of 
the publication of the first two volumes, and also at that of the 
publication of the last two, he was domiciled in London, — whence 
his two prefaces are dated ; but, through nearly six of the inter- 
mediate years, he had been ambassador for the United States at the 
Court of Vienna, having been appointed to that important post in 
November 1861, and removed from it in 1867. On the accession of 
General Grant to the American presidency in 1869, Mr Motley was 
again in request for diplomatic service, and was made American 
minister in London. In consequence of some differences between 
him and the American Secretary of State, he retained the office only 
till November 1870. The rest of his life, which was passed mainly 
in England, though with visits to Holland, was devoted entirely to 
literary labour. In 187 4, under the title of “ The Life and Death of 
John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland, with a View of the 
Primary Causes and Movements of the Thirty Years’ War,” he added 
two volumes more of Dutch history to his former seven, and brought 
his narrative down to the year 1623, when the farther fate of his 
beloved Dutch had became involved in the vast struggle between 
the opposed forces of Protestantism and Roman Catholic Absolutism 
all over Europe. It had been his intention to overtake this vast 
struggle too, and, in the form of an express history of the Thirty 
Years’ War, to bring the Dutch safely through that great European 
entanglement, on to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, when, in the 
general pacification and winding up, the independence of the United 
Provinces was at last formally declared and guaranteed. This 
portion of his projected work he did not live to accomplish. He 
died, in an English country-house, on the 29th of May in the 
present year, at the age of sixty- three. Friendships and family con- 
nections, as well as tastes, had attached him much to England in his 
later years. 
Mr Motley was a man of fine and stately presence, and of gravely 
courteous manners. Of his private life, as well as of his services as 
an American public man and diplomatist, accounts will probably be 
forthcoming in time. For the world at large, he lives, and will 
