“’But as I have discovered this accurately, I have resolved to offer to my masters the continuance of my very humble service for such time and under such conditions as they may think good to prescribe.  I prefer forcing my natural and private inclinations to giving an opportunity for the ministers of this kingdom to discredit us, and to my enemies to succeed in injuring me, and by fraud and malice to force me from my post. . . .  I am truly sorry, being ready to retire, wishing to have an honorable testimony in recompense of my labors, that one is in such hurry to take advantage of my fall. . . .  What envoy will ever dare to speak with vigor if he is not sustained by the government at home? . . .  My enemies have misrepresented my actions, and my language as passionate, exaggerated, mischievous, but I have no passion except for the service of my superiors.’

“Barneveld, from well-considered motives of public policy, was favoring his honorable recall.  But he allowed a decorous interval of more than three years to elapse in which to terminate his affairs, and to take a deliberate departure from that French embassy to which the Advocate had originally promoted him, and in which there had been so many years of mutual benefit and confidence between the two statesmen.  He used no underhand means.  He did not abuse the power of the States-General which he wielded to cast him suddenly and brutally from the distinguished post which he occupied, and so to attempt to dishonor him before the world.  Nothing could be more respectful and conciliatory than the attitude of the government from first to last towards this distinguished functionary.  The Republic respected itself too much to deal with honorable agents whose services it felt obliged to dispense with as with vulgar malefactors who had been detected in crime. . . .

“This work aims at being a political study.  I would attempt to exemplify the influence of individual humors and passions—­some of them among the highest, and others certainly the basest that agitate humanity—­upon the march of great events, upon general historical results at certain epochs, and upon the destiny of eminent personages.”

Here are two suggestive portraits:—­

“The Advocate, while acting only in the name of a slender confederacy, was in truth, so long as he held his place, the prime minister of European Protestantism.  There was none other to rival him, few to comprehend him, fewer still to sustain him.  As Prince Maurice was at that time the great soldier of Protestantism, without clearly scanning the grandeur of the field in which he was a chief actor, or foreseeing the vastness of its future, so the Advocate was its statesman and its prophet.  Could the two have worked together as harmoniously as they had done at an earlier day, it would have been a blessing for the common weal of Europe.  But, alas! the evil genius of jealousy,