al events, those in which the fate of coming
generations was most deeply involved, were those inspired by the spirit
of commercial-enterprise.

Nor can it be denied that there is often a genial and poetic essence even
among things practical or of almost vulgar exterior. In those early
expeditions of the Hollanders to the flaming lands of the equator there
is a rhythm and romance of historical movement not less significant than
in their unexampled defence of fatherland and of the world's liberty
against the great despotism of the age.

Universal monarchy was baffled by the little republic, not within its own
populous cities only, or upon its own barren sands. The long combat
between Freedom and Absolutism had now become as wide as the world. The
greatest European states had been dragged by the iron chain of necessity
into a conflict from which they often struggled to escape, and on every
ocean, and on almost every foot of soil, where the footsteps of mankind
had as yet been imprinted, the fierce encounters were every day renewed.
In the east and the west, throughout that great vague new world, of which
geographers had hardly yet made a sketch, which comprised both the
Americas and something called the East Indies, and which Spain claimed as
her private property, those humbly born and energetic adventurers were
rapidly creating a symmetrical system out of most dismal chaos.

The King of Spain warned all nations from trespassing upon those outlying
possessions.

His edicts had not however prevented the English in moderate numbers, and
the Hollanders in steadily increasing swarms, from enlarging and making
profitable use of these new domains of the world's commerce.

The days were coming when the People was to have more to say than the
pope in regard to the disposition and arrangements of certain large
districts of this planet. While the world-empire, which still excited so
much dismay, was yielding to constant corrosion, another empire, created
by well-directed toil and unflinching courage, was steadily rising out of
the depths. It has often been thought amazing that the little republic
should so long and so triumphantly withstand the enormous forces brought
forward for her destruction. It was not, however, so very surprising.
Foremost among nations, and in advance of the age, the republic had found
the strength which comes from the spirit of association. On a wider scale
than ever before known, large masses of men, wi