There is no doubt whatever that John of Barneveld, Advocate and Seal
Keeper of the little province of Holland during forty years of as
troubled and fertile an epoch as any in human history, was second to none
of his contemporary statesmen. Yet the singular constitution and
historical position of the republic whose destinies he guided and the
peculiar and abnormal office which he held combined to cast a veil over
his individuality. The ever-teeming brain, the restless almost
omnipresent hand, the fertile pen, the eloquent and ready tongue, were
seen, heard, and obeyed by the great European public, by the monarchs,
statesmen, and warriors of the time, at many critical moments of history,
but it was not John of Barneveld that spoke to the world. Those "high
and puissant Lords my masters the States-General" personified the young
but already majestic republic. Dignified, draped, and concealed by that
overshadowing title the informing and master spirit performed its never
ending task.

Those who study the enormous masses of original papers in the archives of
the country will be amazed to find how the penmanship, most difficult to
decipher, of the Advocate meets them at every turn. Letters to monarchs,
generals, ambassadors, resolutions of councils, of sovereign assemblies,
of trading corporations, of great Indian companies, legal and historical
disquisitions of great depth and length on questions agitating Europe,
constitutional arguments, drafts of treaties among the leading powers of
the world, instructions to great commissions, plans for European
campaigns, vast combinations covering the world, alliances of empire,
scientific expeditions and discoveries--papers such as these covered now
with the satirical dust of centuries, written in the small, crabbed,
exasperating characters which make Barneveld's handwriting almost
cryptographic, were once, when fairly engrossed and sealed with the great
seal of the haughty burgher-aristocracy, the documents which occupied the