appear quite supererogatory; but we will, from the very
first, apprise the reader -- our old friend, to whom we are
wont on the first page to promise amusement, and with whom
we always try to keep our word as well as is in our power --
that this explanation is as indispensable to the right
understanding of our story as to that of the great event
itself on which it is based.

Cornelius de Witt, Ruart de Pulten, that is to say, warden
of the dikes, ex-burgomaster of Dort, his native town, and
member of the Assembly of the States of Holland, was
forty-nine years of age, when the Dutch people, tired of the
Republic such as John de Witt, the Grand Pensionary of
Holland, understood it, at once conceived a most violent
affection for the Stadtholderate, which had been abolished
for ever in Holland by the "Perpetual Edict" forced by John
de Witt upon the United Provinces.

As it rarely happens that public opinion, in its whimsical
flights, does not identify a principle with a man, thus the
people saw the personification of the Republic in the two
stern figures of the brothers De Witt, those Romans of
Holland, spurning to pander to the fancies of the mob, and
wedding themselves with unbending fidelity to liberty
without licentiousness, and prosperity without the waste of
superfluity; on the other hand, the Stadtholderate recalled
to the popular mind the grave and thoughtful image of the
young Prince William of Orange.

The brothers De Witt humoured Louis XIV., whose moral