ystem would produce--the
germs of discord and religious animosity that would be sown, the trouble
that would in time arise from separating young people into groups
professing different faiths. Up to the present time the principle of
mixed schools has prevailed, but the victories of the Liberals have been
costly. The Catholics and the Calvinists successively obtained various
concessions, and are prepared to obtain yet others. The Catholic party
is, in a word, more powerful than the Calvinist party: the one, united
and aggressive, gains ground day by day, and it is not unlikely that it
will succeed in gaining a victory which, though not lasting, will provoke
a violent reaction in the country. Things have come to such a pass that
in that very Holland which fought for eighty years against Catholic
despotism there are now serious reasons to fear the outbreak of a
religious war.

[Illustration: Fisherman's Children, Scheveningen.]

Notwithstanding this state of things, which to the present time has
prevented the institution of obligatory instruction demanded by the
Liberals, and keeps a great number of Catholic children away from the
schools, the education of the lower classes in Holland is in a
condition that any European state might envy. In proportion, Holland
contains less people who do not know their alphabet than does
Prussia. "Of all Europe," as a Dutch writer has said with just pride,
although he judges his country severely on other points, "Holland is
the land where all such knowledge as is indispensable to civilized man
is most widely diffused." I was once greatly surprised, on asking a
Dutchman if there were any women-servants who could not read, to hear
myself answered, "Well, yes. I remember twenty years ago that my
mother had a servant who did not know her alphabet, and we thought it
a very strange thing." It is a great satisfaction to a stranger who
does not know the language to be sure that if he shows a name on his
guide-book to the first street-urchin he meets, the boy will
understand it and will try to direct him by gestures.

Talking of Catholics and Calvinists, we arrived at the dunes, and,
although we were near the coast, we could not see the ocean. "Holland
is a strange country," I said to my friend, "in which everything plays
at hide and seek. The facades hide the roofs, the trees hide the
houses, the city hides the ships, the banks hide the canals, the mist
hides the fields, the dunes hide the sea.