e extent of her territory may be
accounted one of the most populous of European States.

It may be easily understood how the physical peculiarities of their
country must influence the Dutch people; and their genius is in perfect
harmony with the character of Holland. It is sufficient to contemplate
the monuments of their great struggle with the sea in order to
understand that their distinctive characteristics must be firmness and
patience, accompanied by a calm and constant courage. That glorious
battle, and the consciousness of owing everything to their own strength,
must have infused and fortified in them a high sense of dignity and an
indomitable spirit of liberty and independence. The necessity of a
constant struggle, of a continuous labor, and of perpetual sacrifices in
defense of their existence, forever taking them back to a sense of
reality, must have made them a highly practical and economical people;
good sense should be their most salient quality, economy one of their
chief virtues; they must be excellent in all useful arts, sparing of
diversion, simple even in their greatness; succeeding in what they
undertake by dint of tenacity and a thoughtful and orderly activity;
more wise than heroic; more conservative than creative; giving no great
architects to the edifice of modern thought, but the ablest of workmen,
a legion of patient and laborious artisans. And by virtue of these
qualities of prudence, phlegmatic activity, and the spirit of
conservatism, they are ever advancing, though by slow degrees; they
acquire gradually, but never lose what they have gained; holding
stubbornly to their ancient customs; preserving almost intact, and
despite the neighborhood of three great nations, their own originality;
preserving it through every form of government, through foreign
invasions, through political and religious wars, and in spite of the
immense concourse of strangers from every country that are always coming
among them; and remaining, in short, of all the northern races, that one
which, though ever advancing in the path of civilization, has kept its
antique stamp most clearly.

It is enough also to remember its form in order to comprehend that this
country of three millions and a half of inhabitants, although bound in
so compact a political union, although recognizable among all the other
northern peoples by certain traits peculiar to the population of all its
provinces, must present a great variety. And so it