is in fact. Between
Zealand and Holland proper, between Holland and Friesland, between
Friesland and Gueldres, between Groningen and Brabant, in spite of
vicinity and so many common tics, there is no less difference than
between the more distant provinces of Italy and France; difference of
language, costume, and character; difference of race and of religion.
The communal regime has impressed an indelible mark upon this people,
because in no other country does it so conform to the nature of things.
The country is divided into various groups of interests organized in the
same manner as the hydraulic system. Whence, association and mutual help
against the common enemy, the sea; but liberty for local institutions
and forces. Monarchy has not extinguished the ancient municipal spirit,
and this it is that renders impossible a complete fusion of the State,
in all the great States that have made the attempt. The great rivers and
gulfs are at the same time commercial roads serving as national bonds
between the different provinces, and barriers which defend old
traditions and old customs in each.

THE DUTCH MASTERS

From 'Holland and Its People'

The Dutch school of painting has one quality which renders it
particularly attractive to us Italians; it is above all others the most
different from our own, the very antithesis or the opposite pole of art.
The Dutch and Italian schools are the most original, or, as has been
said, the only two to which the title rigorously belongs; the others
being only daughters or younger sisters, more or less resembling them.

Thus even in painting Holland offers that which is most sought after in
travel and in books of travel: the new.

Dutch painting was born with the liberty and independence of Holland. As
long as the northern and southern provinces of the Low Countries
remained under the Spanish rule and in the Catholic faith, Dutch
painters painted like Belgian painters; they studied in Belgium,
Germany, and Italy; Heemskerk imitated Michael Angelo, Bloemart followed
Correggio, and "Il Moro" copied Titian, not to indicate others: and they
were one and all pedantic imitators, who added to the exaggerations of
the Italian style a certain German coarsenesss, the result of which was
a bastard style of painting, still inferior to the first, childish,
stiff in design, crude in color, and completely wanting in chiaroscuro,
but at least not a servile imitation, and becoming, as it were, a faint
p