In every bookseller's and print shop window in all the cities of the
country, the fallen statesman was represented in all possible ludicrous,
contemptible, and hateful shapes, while hags and blind beggars about the
streets screeched filthy and cursing ballads against him, even at his
very doors.

The effect of energetic, uncompromising calumny has rarely been more
strikingly illustrated than in the case of this statesman. Blackened
daily all over by a thousand trowels, the purest and noblest character
must have been defiled, and it is no wonder that the incrustation upon
the Advocate's fame should have lasted for two centuries and a half. It
may perhaps endure for as many more: Not even the vile Marshal d'Ancre,
who had so recently perished, was more the mark of obloquy in a country
which he had dishonoured, flouted, and picked to the bone than was
Barneveld in a commonwealth which he had almost created and had served
faithfully from youth to old age. It was even the fashion to compare him
with Concini in order to heighten the wrath of the public, as if any
parallel between the ignoble, foreign paramour of a stupid and sensual
queen, and the great statesman, patriot, and jurist of whom civilization
will be always proud, could ever enter any but an idiot's brain.

Meantime the Stadholder, who had so successfully handled the Assembly of
Gelderland and Overyssel, now sailed across the Zuiderzee from Kampen to
Amsterdam. On his approach to the stately northern Venice, standing full
of life and commercial bustle upon its vast submerged forest of Norwegian
pines, he was met by a fleet of yachts and escorted through the water
gates of the into the city.

Here an immense assemblage of vessels of every class, from the humble
gondola to the bulky East Indianian and the first-rate ship of war, gaily