The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

478 INFLUENCE OP POPERY ON NATIONS.on the north of it,—Holland.Holland was originally a fewscattered sand-banks at the mouth of the Rhine, when itsinhabitants conceived the design of forming a country amidshifting sands and roaring waves. Piece by piece did theyrescue from the ocean an extensive territory ;and, girdlingit with a strong rampart, it became in time the theatre ofmighty deeds, and the asylum of Protestant liberty, whenthe rest of Continental Europe fell under the power of tyrants.Every reader of history knows the long, unequal,but finally triumphant contest which they waged with theEmperor Charles, who sought to compel them to embracethe Romish faith. The glorious era of the nation dates fromthe time that the Hollanders threw off the yoke of Spain.From that period their social interests steadily advanced,their commercial genius expanded, the trade of India cameinto their hands, and they replenished their sea-girt homewith the riches and the luxuries of the Orient. No nationteaches the lesson so strikingly as Holland, how little apeople owe to the advantages of soil, and how much theirgreatness depends upon themselves. In all points Hollandis the antipodes of Ireland.'^ Without one good natural harbourupon their coasts, the Dutch built commodious havensamid the waves for their shipping. Their soil, which wasoriginally the sand which the ocean had cast up, could yieldnothing as a basis of trade. All had they to import ;—timberto build their ships,—the raw material of their manufactures.Nevertheless, under these immense disadvantagesdid the Dutch become the first commercial people in theworld. They owed all to their Protestantism, and to thatelement do they still owe their superiority among continentalnations, in the virtues of industry, frugality, sobriety,sound morals, and love of freedom.Let us ascend the Rhine, and mark the conditionof thedukedoms and palatinates which lie upon the course of this* The contrast was very strikingly stated by Sir W. Temple long ago.See Lis Uistory of the United Provinces.