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262 led to Rotterdam and Amsterdam, and the commercial enterprise and naval power of Holland knew no bound! The vigor of Cromwell and the genius of Blake scarcely restrained that power, while in the time of Charles II. of England, the Dutch defeated the combined fleets of the English and the French in 1673. The foreign colonies and possessions of the Dutch multiplied every year,—and at the present date they are, next to the English, the greatest colonists in the world. Sumatra, Java, a part of Borneo, and the whole of Celebes and Mollucca islands in Asia own the Dutch rule and have a population of over twenty millions! And when it is considered that these results have been achieved by a people who have scarcely a country of their own to live in except what they have wrested from the sea by sheer industry and ingenuity, that their population in their motherland is only about 4 millions which is one-eighth of the population of the British Isles, the enterprise and activity and vigor of this hard-headed race can well be imagined.

Holland was a republic before the time of Napoleon. Napoleon conquered Holland and made his brother king of it. But that regime was overthrown in 1813 and Holland now had a king of her own in Frederick of the House of Orange. Belgium and Holland were united after Waterloo, as had been stated before, but the two nations were different in race, different in religion, and different in feelings and associations, and the patched-up union did not last long, and in 1830 Belgium was separated from the kingdom of Holland.