Although a ripe scholar, he rarely wrote in Latin, and not often in French.

His ambition was to do his work thoroughly according to his view of duty, and to ask God's blessing upon it without craving overmuch the applause of men.
Such were the two men, the soldier and the statesman.

Would the Republic, fortunate enough to possess two such magnificent and widely contrasted capacities, be wise enough to keep them in its service, each supplementing the other, and the two combining in a perfect whole?
Or was the great law of the Discords of the World, as potent as that other principle of Universal Harmony and planetary motion which an illustrious contemporary--that Wurtemberg astronomer, once a soldier of the fierce Alva, now the half-starved astrologer of the brain-sick Rudolph--was at that moment discovering, after "God had waited six thousand years for him to do it," to prevail for the misery of the Republic and shame of Europe?
Time was to show.
The new state had forced itself into the family of sovereignties somewhat to the displeasure of most of the Lord's anointed.

Rebellious and republican, it necessarily excited the jealousy of long-established and hereditary governments.
The King of Spain had not formally acknowledged the independence of the United Provinces.

He had treated with them as free, and there was supposed to be much virtue in the conjunction.