Excerpt from History of the People of the Netherlands, Vol. 4: Frederick Henry, John De Witt, William III HE historian of the golden age of the Nether lands has a pleasant task to perform, because the glory of posterity has never risen higher than in this time, especially in the second half of the century. But this task is difficult, for great is the number of the works that have appeared on this attractive epoch, and hard it is to hold fast the thread of the narrative amid the many important events occurring in every depart ment of the national life. The author hopes he has over come this difficulty without allowing too ample a space to any portion of the history of the people, so far as possible without being swayed by his personal preference for persons and systems. 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.