disappear, like the Lake of Beemster. By the removal of the thick mud, land has been converted into lakes, and these lakes are again transformed into meadows. So the country changes, ordering and altering its aspect in accordance with the violence of the waters and the needs of man. As one glances over the latest map, he may be sure that in a few years, it will be useless, because at the moment he is studying it, there exist bays which will disappear little by little, tracts of land which are on the point of detaching themselves from the continent, and large canals which will open and carry life into uninhabited regions.

But Hollanders did more than defend themselves from the water; they became its masters. The water was their scourge; it became their defence. If a foreign army invades their territory, they open the dykes and loose the sea and the rivers, as they loosed them on the Romans, the Spanish, and the army of Louis XIV., and then defend the inland towns with their fleets. Water was their poverty; they have made it riches. The whole country is covered with a network of canals, which irrigate the land and are at the same time the highways of the people. The towns communicate with the sea by means of the canals; canals lead from town to town, binding the towns to the villages, and uniting the villages themselves, as they lie with their homesteads scattered over the plain. Smaller canals surround the farms, the meadows, and the kitchen-gardens, taking the place of walls and hedges; every house is a little port. Ships, barges, boats, and rafts sail through the villages, wind round the houses, and thread the country in all directions, just as carts and carriages do in other places.

And here, too, Holland has accomplished many gigantic works, such as the William Canal in North Brabant, which, more than eighty kilometers long and thirty meters wide, crosses the whole of Northern Holland and unites Amsterdam to the North Sea: the new canal, the largest in Europe, which will join Amsterdam to the ocean, across the downs, and another, equally large, which will unite the town of Rotterdam to the sea. The canals are the veins of Holland, and the water is its blood.

But, aside from the canals, the draining of the lakes, and the works of defence, as one passes rapidly through Holland he sees on every side indications of marvellous labor. The ground,—in other countries the gift of nature,—is here the result of industry. Holland acquired the greater part of its riches through commerce, but the earth had to yield its fruits before commerce could exist; and there was no earth—it had to be created. There were banks of sand, broken here and there by layers of peat, and downs which the wind blew about and scattered over the country; large expanses of muddy land, destined, as it seemed, to eternal barrenness. Iron and coal, the first elements of industry, were lacking; there was no wood, for the forests had already been destroyed by storms before agriculture began; there was neither stone nor metal. Nature, as a Dutch poet has said, had denied all its gifts to Holland, and the Dutch were obliged to do everything in spite of her. They began by fertilizing the sand. In some places they made the ground fruitful by placing on it layers of soil brought from a distance, just as a garden is formed; they spread the rubble from the downs over the sodden meadows; they mixed bits of the peat taken from the water with the earth that was too sandy; they dug up clay to give a fresh fertility to the surface of the ground; they strove to till the downs; and thus, by a thousand varied efforts, as they continually warded off the threatening waters, they succeeded in cultivating Holland as highly as other countries more favored by Nature. The Holland of sands and marshes, which the ancients considered barely habitable, now sends abroad, year by year, agricultural products to the value of a hundred million francs, possesses about a million three hundred thousand head of cattle, and may be rated in proportion to its size among the most populous countries in Europe.

Now, it is obvious that in a country so extraordinary the inhabitants must be very different from those of other lands. Indeed, few peoples have been more influenced by the nature of the country they inhabit, than the Dutch. Their genius is in perfect harmony with the physical character of Holland. When one contemplates the memorials of the great warfare which this nation has waged with the sea, one understands that its characteristics must be steadfastness and patience, conjoined with calm and determined courage. The glorious struggle, and the knowledge that they owe everything to themselves, must have infused and strengthened in them a lofty sense of their own dignity and an indomitable spirit of liberty and independence. The necessity for a continual struggle, for incessant work, and for continual sacrifices to protect their very existence, confronts them perpetually with realities, and must have helped to make them an extremely practical and economical nation. Good sense necessarily became their most prominent quality; economy was perforce one of their principal virtues. This nation was obliged to excel in useful works, to be sober in its enjoyments, simple even in its greatness, and successful in all things that are to be attained by tenacity of purpose and by activity springing from reflection and precision. It had to be wise rather than heroic, conservative rather than creative; to give no great architects to the edifice of modern thought, but many able workmen, a legion of patient and useful laborers. By virtue of these qualities of prudence, phlegmatic activity, and conservatism the Dutch are ever advancing, although step by step. They acquire slowly, but lose none of their acquisitions;—they are loth to quit ancient usages, and, although three great nations are in close proximity to them, they retain their originality as if isolated. They have retained it through different forms of government, through foreign invasions, through the political and religious wars of which Holland was the theatre—in spite of the immense crowd of foreigners from every country who have taken refuge in their land, and have lived there at all times. They are, in short, of all the northern nations, that one which has retained its ancient typical character as it advanced on the road toward civilization. One recalling the conformation of this country, with its three and a half millions of inhabitants, can easily understand that although fused into a solid political union, and although recognizable amongst the other northern nations by certain traits peculiar to the inhabitants of all its provinces, it must nevertheless present a great variety. Such, indeed, is the case. Between Zealand and Holland proper, between Holland and Friesland, between Friesland and Gelderland, between Groningen and Brabant, although they are closely bound together by local and historical ties, there is a difference as great as that existing between the most distant provinces of Italy and France. They differ in language, in costume and in character, in race and in religion. The communal régime has impressed on this nation an indelible stamp, because nowhere else has it so conformed to the nature of things. The interests of the country are divided into various groups, of whose organization the hydraulic system is an example. Hence association and mutual help against the common enemy, the sea, but freedom of action in local institutions. The monarchical régime has not extinguished the ancient municipal spirit, which frustrated the efforts of all those great states that tried to absorb Holland. The great rivers and deep gulfs serve both as commercial roads which constitute a national bond