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 refu