Page:Things Seen In Holland (1912).djvu/188

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Things Seen in Holland

tion felt for William the Silent and his successors. By her utterance at the time of her inauguration Queen Wilhelmina struck a responsive chord in the hearts of her subjects, who saw incarnated in her the spirit of her great ancestor.

It may be here recalled whence the rulers of the Netherlands have derived the name of Orange. The principality of that name was originally situated in the South of France, in what is now the department of Vaucluse, which comprises a portion of the former Comtat-Venaissin and the principality of Orange. The sovereignty of the principality passed to the Nassau family after the death of Philibert de Chalon, who died in 1530, while in the Pope's service, and who had designated as his successor the only son of his eldest sister, Claude, the wife of Henry of Nassau. This youth, René of Nassau, adopted the

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