ica what it is: one, the civilization of ancient Rome, with its genius for government and its instinct for justice and equal rights; the other, the strong wild blood of the Germanic race, with its passion for individual freedom, which has given nerve, energy, and strength to modern Europe. The first of these elements was utterly extinguished in England by the Anglo-Saxon conquest, while the feudal system afterwards came in to rob the Germanic conquerors of many of their early ideas regarding civil liberty.

One country alone in Northern Europe was largely free from both this devastation and this blight. There the civilization of Rome was never extinguished, and the feudal system took but feeble root. The people were of Germanic blood, and preserved more purely than any others their Germanic ideas and institutions; but engrafted on them were the arts, the learning, and the laws derived from communication with civilized and civilizing Italy. To the patriot, to the lover of civil and religious liberty, as well as to the student of art and science in any land, the history of this republican country must always have a peculiar charm. But, apart from its general features, this history is so interwoven with that of England and America that any one concerned with the past of either of these countries will find it a subject of unfailing interest.

When modern Englishmen set out to write the history of their country, they cross the Channel and describe the Angles and the Saxons in their early home upon the Continent.* That home was so near to the Netherlands that the people of Holland and the conquerors of Britain

*See Green's "Making of England," Stubb's "Constitutional History," etc.

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spoke substantially the same language, and were almost of one blood. To the Englishman, thinking only of the greatness of his own land, this original relationship may seem sufficient honor for a tiny fragment of the earth's surface not as large as Switzerland, but it is only the first chapter of the story. For hundreds of years in later times, and until long after the settlement of America, the Netherlands stood as the guide and instructor of England in almost everything which has made her materially great. When the Reformation came in which Northwestern Europe was new-born, it was the Netherlands which led the van, and for eighty years waged the war which disenthralled the souls of men. Out of that conflict, shared by thousands of heroic Englishmen, but in which England as a nation hardly had a place, Puritanism was evolved-the Puritanism which gave its triumph to the Netherland Republic, and has shaped the character of the English-speaking race.

In time, England came to hate the benefactor to whom she owed so much, and some of her people have repaid their debt in a manner not uncommon in such cases. Thus, after the Restoration of the Stuarts, and still more after the Tory reaction which followed the Revolution of 1688, the political writers about the court habitually ridiculed the Dutchmen for virtues which they could not understand. The republican Hollander thought it a disgrace to have his wife or daughter debauched by a king or noble. The courtiers about Charles II. viewed this subject differently, and regarded the Dutchman as ill-mannered for his want of taste.*

* In Holland, where he passed part of his days of exile, Charles and his courtiers were constantly and openly rebuked for their licentious and profligate habits. These rebukes were as little relished

Added to this were the Hollander's respect for the pri vate rights of all classes; his devotion to art and learning; his love of fair dealing in personal and in public matters; his industry, frugality; and, finally, his universal toleration. A man with these traits of character, although sympathetic with the English Puritan on many points, was hardly comprehensible to the ruling classes in England two centuries and a half ago. No one could deny the Dutchmen's courage, for they were among the boldest soldiers and sailors that the world has ever seen; but they were not gentlemen from the aristocratic point of view.

As for the Englishmen of the Restoration, one little incident will illustrate what they thought high breeding. Sir William Temple, as is well known, was one of the most elegant and accomplished gentlemen at the Court of Charles II-a wit among the courtiers, and a courtier among the wits. Being sent as ambassador to The Hague, he fortunately jotted down some of his experiences, and among others the following. Dining one day with the Chief Burgomaster of Amsterdam, and having a severe cold, he noticed that every time he spit on the floor, while at table, a tight, handsome wench, who stood in a corner holding a cloth, got down on her knees and wiped it up. Seeing this, he turned to his host and apologized for the trouble which he gave, receiving the jocular response, “It is well for you that

and as little forgiven by the "merry monarch" as was the stern discipline to which he was subjected in Scotland during his early life. Rogers's "Story of Holland," p. 257; Davies, iii. 12. No reader needs to be reminded how many of the noble families of England are descended from illegitimate scions of royalty, and how they prize their ancestry.

* Macaulay's Essays, "Sir William Temple."

ENGLISH ANTIPATHY TO THE DUTCH

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my wife is not home, for she would have turned you out of the house for soiling her floor, although you are the English ambassador." This incident, he says, "illustrates the authority of women in Holland." That it conveyed no other lesson to his mind gives us a better idea of the manners of the English upper classes two centuries ago than pages of description.* Hallam, writing of England in the time of Elizabeth, says: "Hypocritical adulation was so much among the vices of that age, that the want of it passed for rudeness.”+ It was this form of rudeness in the Hollander, and not what would be called bad manners to-day, that was found objectionable by the English.

When we now remember that England and Holland became commercial rivals, and that England has never scrupled at anything to crush out a competitor, we need not wonder at the national prejudice towards the Dutchman, whose virtues, developed under a republic, were a standing protest against a government for the upper classes alone. In 1673, Chancellor Shaftesbury, in an address to Parliament, summed up the whole case against Holland. It was an enemy of all monarchies, especially the English; their only competitor in commerce and naval power, and the chief obstacle to the universal dominion which England should aim at: Delenda esto Carthago. Such a government must be destroyed.‡

Such, in brief outline, is the origin of the Englishman's antipathy to the Dutch; an antipathy which in great

"Memoirs of what Passed in Christendom from 1672 to 1679," Sir William Temple's Works, ii. 458. See also Felltham's "Resolves;""Observations on the Low Countries," 12th ed. (London, 1709), p. 609.

+"Const. Hist." i. 277.

"Parlt. Hist." vol. iv. col. 504, cited by Davies.

measure had led to a general disparagement of this people, and thus to obscuring the truth of history; although to such an exhibition of national prejudice there have always been illustrious exceptions.*

That the American of English descent should, in former times, have shown some of this prejudice is in no ways remarkable, since he knew little of the facts. But his indulgence in the disparagement at the present day, when all the records are accessible, is a very different matter, for it is to the country of this republican people,

* What some of the able Englishmen of the seventeenth century thought of them will be shown in a late chapter. As to those of modern times, the first whom we may notice is Samuel Rogers, the poet. He, in the notes to his "Italy," pays a high tribute to the Dutch Republic, as superior to Venice, saying that it produced "not only the greatest scamen, but the greatest lawyers, the greatest physicians, the most accomplished scholars, the most skilful painters, and statesmen as wise as they were just." Hallam, an able and certainly not a prejudiced judge, says that Holland, “at the end of the sixteenth century and for many years afterwards, was pre-eminently the literary country of Europe," and all through the seventeenth century was the peculiarly learned country also. The Dutch were "a great people, a people fertile of men of various ability and erudition, a people of scholars, of theologians and philosophers, of mathematicians, of historians, and we may add of poets."-Hallam's "Literature of Europe," iii. 278, iv. 59. Macaulay, writing of the period just before the English revolution of 1688, says that the aspect of Holland "produced on English travellers of that age an effect similar to the effect which the first sight of England now produces on a Norwegian or a Canadian.” 66 History of England," chap. ii. Still fuller is the tribute of the last English writer upon Holland, a member of Parliament and a professor of political economy at Oxford. He claims that the revolt of the Netherlands and the success of Holland is the beginning of modern civilization, the Dutch having taught Europe nearly everything which it knows. "The Story of Holland," by James E. Thorold Rogers, pp. 10, 11.