He had small love for the pleasures of the table, but was promiscuous and unlicensed in his amours.  He was methodical in his household arrangements, and rather stingy than liberal in money matters.  He personally read all his letters, accounts, despatches, and other documents trivial or important, but wrote few letters with his own hand, so that, unlike his illustrious father’s correspondence, there is little that is characteristic to be found in his own.  He was plain but not shabby in attire, and was always dressed in exactly the same style, wearing doublet and hose of brown woollen, a silk under vest, a short cloak lined with velvet, a little plaited ruff on his neck, and very loose boots.  He ridiculed the smart French officers who, to show their fine legs, were wont to wear such tight boots as made them perspire to get into them, and maintained, in precept and practice, that a man should be able to jump into his boots and mount and ride at a moment’s notice.  The only ornaments he indulged in, except, of course, on state occasions, were a golden hilt to his famous sword, and a rope of diamonds tied around his felt hat.

He was now in the full flower of his strength and his fame, in his forty-second year, and of a noble and martial presence.  The face, although unquestionably handsome, offered a sharp contrast within itself; the upper half all intellect, the lower quite sensual.  Fair hair growing thin, but hardly tinged with grey, a bright, cheerful, and thoughtful forehead, large hazel eyes within a singularly large orbit of brow; a straight, thin, slightly aquiline, well-cut nose—­such features were at open variance with the broad, thick-lipped, sensual mouth, the heavy pendant jowl, the sparse beard on the glistening cheek, and the moleskin-like moustachio and chin tuft.  Still, upon the whole, it was a face and figure which gave the world assurance of a man and a commander of men.  Power and intelligence were stamped upon him from his birth.

Barneveld was tall and majestic of presence, with large quadrangular face, austere, blue eyes looking authority and command, a vast forehead, and a grizzled beard.  Of fluent and convincing eloquence with tongue and pen, having the power of saying much in few words, he cared much more for the substance than the graces of speech or composition.  This tendency was not ill exemplified in a note of his written on a sheet of questions addressed to him by a States’ ambassador about to start on an important mission, but a novice in his business, the answers to which questions were to serve for his diplomatic instructions.

“Item and principally,” wrote the Envoy, “to request of M. de Barneveld a formulary or copy of the best, soundest, wisest, and best couched despatches done by several preceding ambassadors in order to regulate myself accordingly for the greater service of the Province and for my uttermost reputation.”

The Advocate’s answer, scrawled in his nearly illegible hand, was—­