sovereigns
of Christendom. The Emperor of Japan addressed him as his brother
monarch, assured him that his subjects trading to that distant empire
should be welcomed and protected, and expressed himself ashamed that so
great a prince, whose name and fame had spread through the world, should
send his subjects to visit a country so distant and unknown, and offer
its emperor a friendship which he was unconscious of deserving.

He had been a commander of armies and a chief among men since he came to
man's estate, and he was now in the very vigour of life, in his
forty-second year. Of Imperial descent and closely connected by blood or
alliance with many of the most illustrious of reigning houses, the
acknowledged master of the most royal and noble of all sciences, he was
of the stuff of which kings were made, and belonged by what was then
accounted right divine to the family of kings. His father's death had
alone prevented his elevation to the throne of Holland, and such
possession of half the sovereignty of the United Netherlands would
probably have expanded into dominion over all the seven with a not
fantastic possibility of uniting the ten still obedient provinces into a
single realm. Such a kingdom would have been more populous and far
wealthier than contemporary Great Britain and Ireland. Maurice, then a
student at Leyden, was too young at that crisis, and his powers too
undeveloped to justify any serious attempt to place him in his father's
place.

The Netherlands drifted into a confederacy of aristocratic republics, not
because they had planned a republic, but because they could not get a
king, foreign or native. The documents regarding the offer of the
sovereign countship to William remained in the possession of Maurice, and
a few years before the peace there had been a private meeting of leading
personages, of which Barneveld was the promoter and chief spokesman, to
take into consideration the propriety and possibility of conferring that
sovereignty upon the son which had virtually belonged to the father. The
obstacles were deemed so numerous, and especially the scheme seemed so
fraught with danger to Maurice, that it was reluctantly abandoned by his
best friends, among whom unquestionably was the Advocate.

There was no reason whatever why the now successful and mature soldier,
to whom the country was under such vast obligations, should not aspire to
the sovereignty. The Provinces had not pledged themselves to
r