Excerpt from History of the Administration of John De Witt: Grand Pensionary of Holland; 1623-1651 The period comprehended in the following book is not a heroic period, and John de Witt is, in no sense, a hero. His age has little in common with the noble epoch described with so much graphic force by Mr. Motley, and, in studying it, we are moving in altogether a lower world of human interest, passion, duty, and activity. But this has had less to do with the neglect of the period by modern Dutch historians than the extreme difficulty, and the ever-recurring impossibility, of getting at the precise measure of De Witts personal work and influence; and it is the overwhelming labour this entails among unpublished manuscripts that has stood in the way of any serious attempt being hitherto made to write an account of his life or a history of his administration. His public life, and all that can be gleaned of his private life, lie entombed beneath mountains of unprinted letters and documents. Yet, in some respects, so scanty are the materials that, for some years before he entered on public life, his professional occupation and whereabouts can only be arrived at by piecing together the addresses of the extant letters sent to him by his friends. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.