ing pleasure,
despising the vain ostentation of greatness, such application to
business, such ability in it, such courage, such firmness, and so perfect
a knowledge of the nation you governed, seemed to assure you of a fixed
and stable support in the public affection. But nothing can be durable
that depends on the passions of the people.

_De Witt_.--It is very generous in your Majesty, not only to
compassionate the fate of a man whose political principles made him an
enemy to your greatness, but to ascribe it to the caprice and inconstancy
of the people, as if there had been nothing very blamable in his conduct.
I feel the magnanimity of this discourse from your Majesty, and it
confirms what I have heard of all your behaviour after my death. But I
must frankly confess that, although the rage of the populace was carried
much too far when they tore me and my unfortunate brother to pieces, yet
I certainly had deserved to lose their affection by relying too much on
the uncertain and dangerous friendship of France, and by weakening the
military strength of the State, to serve little purposes of my own power,
and secure to myself the interested affection of the burgomasters or
others who had credit and weight in the faction the favour of which I
courted. This had almost subjected my country to France, if you, great
prince, had not been set at the head of the falling Republic, and had not
exerted such extraordinary virtues and abilities to raise and support it,
as surpassed even the heroism and prudence of William, our first
Stadtholder, and equalled yon to the most illustrious patriots of Greece
or Rome.

_William_.--This praise from your mouth is glorious to me indeed! What
can so much exalt the character of a prince as to have his actions
approved by a zealous Republican and the enemy of his house?

_De Witt_.--If I did not approve them I should show myself the enemy of
the Republic. You never sought to tyrannise over it; you loved, you
defended, you preserved its freedom. Thebes was not more indebted to
Epaminondas or Pelopidas for its independence and glory than the United
Provinces were to you. How wonderful was it to see a youth, who had
scarce attained to the twenty-second year of his age, whose spirit had
been depressed and kept down by a jealous and hostile faction, rising at
once to the conduct of a most arduous and perilous war, stopping an enemy
victorious, triumphant, who had penetrated into the heart o