ould attempt to force the children of Belial into the company
of the elect and to drive the faithful out of their own churches, should
be detested as bitterly as papists had ever been.

Had Barneveld's intellect been broad enough to imagine in a great
republic the separation of Church and State, he would deserve a tenderer
sympathy, but he would have been far in advance of his age. It is not
cheerful to see so powerful an intellect and so patriotic a character
daring to entrust the relations between man and his Maker to the decree
of a trading corporation. But alas! the world was to wait for centuries
until it should learn that the State can best defend religion by letting
it alone, and that the political arm is apt to wither with palsy when it
attempts to control the human conscience.

It is not entirely the commonwealth of the United Netherlands that is of
importance in the epoch which I have endeavoured to illustrate. History
can have neither value nor charm for those who are not impressed with a
conviction of its continuity.

More than ever during the period which we call modern history has this
idea of the continuousness of our race, and especially of the inhabitants
of Europe and America, become almost oppressive to the imagination. There
is a sense of immortality even upon earth when we see the succession of
heritages in the domains of science, of intellectual and material wealth
by which mankind, generation after generation, is enriching itself.

If this progress be a dream, if mankind be describing a limited circle
instead of advancing towards the infinite; then no study can be more
contemptible than the study of history.

Few strides more gigantic have been taken in the march of humanity than
those by which a parcel of outlying provinces in the north of Europe
exchanged slavery to a foreign despotism and to the Holy Inquisition for
the position of a self-governing commonwealth, in the front rank of
contemporary powers, and in many respects the foremost of the world. It
is impossible to calculate the amount of benefit tendered to civilization
by the example of the Dutch republic. It has been a model which has been
imitated, in many respects, by great nations. It has even been valuable
in its very defects; indicating to the patient observer many errors most
important to avoid.

Therefore, had the little republic sunk for ever in the sea so soon as
the treaty of peace had been signed at Antwerp, its career w