Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/219

Rh lace, light and airy, rising to a dizzy height towards heaven. This is the highest triumph of lace-making.

Across the broad quays, alongside the harbor, you see low, green fields, extending on the other side of the river, far, far into the distance. The tall reeds bend before the winds, as if they were beckoning into Holland. My heart and my inclination attracts me thither, because no one of the newer states of Europe has a nobler history, and no one, perhaps, at the present day, has preserved more unchanged the peculiarity of its popular life, manners, and costume. Neither had friendly voices been wanting, at the Congress, which called me thither, and made me conscious that the friend of humanity might find there, now, much to learn. I must now, however, content myself with pausing upon the strand, and thence saluting the good little country, with a glance of esteem and heart-felt acknowledgment.

It was a long and bloody struggle for religion and liberty of conscience, against Spain, at that time in the height of her power, that Holland grew great and free. She won in the struggle at the same time that the mighty Spain lost her power and sunk—and has sunk ever since—whilst the little Netherland ascended from the waves, a new creation, a new revelation of beauty and power in the eye of day. She grew in dominion on the sea, in dominion in the realms of art and science; in outward power; in inward wealth. She planted with beautiful flowers her soil, lately bathed with the blood of battles, and in the peace of her flower-gardens, gave an asylum to foreigners from other lands persecuted for religion and freedom of