In this the churchman was right, but he might have added that the "lovers of virtue" would have found it as little "laudable" for ecclesiastics to dispose of the sacred offices in their gift, for carpets, tapestry, and annual payments of certain percentages upon the cure of souls.

If the profits respectively gained by military and clerical speculators in that day should be compared, the disadvantage would hardly be found to lie with those of the long robe.
Such, then, at the beginning of 1560, was William of Orange; a generous, stately, magnificent, powerful grandee.

As a military commander, he had acquitted himself very creditably of highly important functions at an early age.

Nevertheless it was the opinion of many persons, that he was of a timid temperament.

He was even accused of having manifested an unseemly panic at Philippeville, and of having only been restrained by the expostulations of his officers, from abandoning both that fortress and Charlemont to Admiral Coligny, who had made his appearance in the neighborhood, merely at the head of a reconnoitring party.