Page:Religious Thought in Holland during the Nineteenth Century James Hutton Mackay.djvu/20

 AND THE REVEIL 9

had Dutch blood in his veins. Most of his life he. was, as described by Loman, “ a ﬁghter standing alone,” and this fact some writers have attempted to explain on the theory that his French origin made him incapable of fully sympathising with the Dutch character. Of Da Costa, a poet of jewish race and a prominent ﬁgure in the religious movement we have presently to consider, Al’ard Pierson says that he was never really popular—never became our Da Costa. because he had a passion for ideas, which is alien to a people like the Dutch, who indulge in their common talk in the use of diminutives. It is said by ethnologists that there is a considerable Celtic strain in the Dutch race; but if so, it certainly does not appear in their mental character. If it is the character of that race, as we are told on good {uthorityi “ to be doomed and yet privileged to lwein that confused land, where the real and Ehe 'maglnary, the practical and the impossible Intertwine," there is little of the Celt in the Sigmhman- . What they boast of above all is memgpssesmpn of sound understanding and

SObr‘etY- The glamour of the Celt