th, while on the other hand Aerssens, as the private and
confidential agent of a friendly but not publicly recognized
commonwealth, had been for many years in almost daily personal
communication with the King.

It is also important to note that the modern fallacy according to which
republics being impersonal should not be represented by ambassadors had
not appeared in that important epoch in diplomatic history. On the
contrary, the two great republics of the age, Holland and Venice,
vindicated for themselves, with as much dignity and reason as success,
their right to the highest diplomatic honours.

The distinction was substantial not shadowy; those haughty commonwealths
not considering it advantageous or decorous that their representatives
should for want of proper official designations be ranked on great
ceremonial occasions with the ministers of petty Italian principalities
or of the three hundred infinitesimal sovereignties of Germany.

It was the advice of the French king especially, who knew politics and
the world as well as any man, that the envoys of the Republic which he
befriended and which stood now on the threshold of its official and
national existence, should assert themselves at every court with the
self-reliance and courtesy becoming the functionaries of a great power.
That those ministers were second to the representatives of no other
European state in capacity and accomplishment was a fact well known to
all who had dealings with them, for the States required in their
diplomatic representatives knowledge of history and international law,
modern languages, and the classics, as well as familiarity with political
customs and social courtesies; the breeding of gentlemen in short, and
the accomplishments of scholars. It is both a literary enjoyment and a
means of historical and political instruction to read after the lapse of
centuries their reports and despatches. They worthily compare as works of
art with those diplomatic masterpieces the letters and 'Relazioni' of the
Venetian ambassadors; and it is well known that the earlier and some of
the most important treatises on public and international law ever written
are from the pens of Hollanders, who indeed may be said to have invented
that science.'

The Republic having thus steadily shouldered its way into the family of
nations was soon called upon to perform a prominent part in the world's
affairs. More than in our own epoch there was a close political