anner, nevertheless, as is proved
by the ease with which it is parodied, by the danger it is in of
degenerating into mannerism whenever it forgets itself. Fancy a parody
of Shakespeare--I do not mean of his words, but of his tone, for that
is what distinguishes the master. You might as well try it with the
Venus of Melos. In Shakespeare it is always the higher thing, the
thought, the fancy, that is preeminent; it is Caesar that draws all
eyes, and not the chariot in which he rides, or the throng which is
but the reverberation of his supremacy. If not, how explain the charm
with which he dominates in all tongues, even under the disenchantment
of translation? Among the most alien races he is as solidly at home as
a mountain seen from different sides by many lands, itself superbly
solitary, yet the companion of all thoughts and domesticated in all
imaginations.

IV

AMERICANS AS SUCCESSORS OF THE DUTCH[38]

For more than a century the Dutch were the laughing-stock of polite
Europe. They were butter-firkins, swillers of beer and schnapps, and
their _vrouws_ from whom Holbein painted the all but loveliest of
Madonnas, Rembrandt the graceful girl who sits immortal on his knee in
Dresden, and Rubens his abounding goddesses, were the synonyms of
clumsy vulgarity. Even so late as Irving the ships of the greatest
navigators in the world were represented as sailing equally well
stern-foremost. That the aristocratic Venetians should have

"Riveted with gigantic piles
Thorough the center their new catched miles"

was heroic. But the far more marvelous achievement of the Dutch in
the same kind was ludicrous even to republican Marvell. Meanwhile,
during that very century of scorn, they were the best artists,
sailors, merchants, bankers, printers, scholars, jurisconsults, and
statesmen in Europe, and the genius of Motley has revealed them to us,
earning a right to themselves by the most heroic struggle in human
annals. But, alas! they were not merely simple burghers who had fairly
made themselves High Mightinesses, and could treat on equal terms with
anointed kings, but their commonwealth carried in its bosom the germs
of democracy. They even unmuzzled, at least after dark, that dreadful
mastiff, the Press, whose scent is, or ought to be, so keen for wolves
in sheep's clothing and for certain other animals in lions' skins.
They made fun of sacred majesty, and, what was worse, managed
uncommonly well w