miners organize choral societies; the laborers in Antwerp and Brussels, and the ship-calkers and sailors of Amsterdam, sing in chorus and in true time while at work, and in the street on returning home at night.*

Here we may close this chapter, and with it our general view of the material and artistic side of the Netherland prosperity and progress. The result is a striking one, in view of the little attention which, until a recent date, has been paid to this people by the historians of other nations. They took no great part in wars; since the dissolution of the Batavian Legion they had neither made nor unmade emperors; but before the middle of the sixteenth century they had conquered almost all the fields of industry and art. When the people of England were just beginning their wonderful career of modern progress, these men across the Channel stood foremost of the world in agriculture, manufactures, commerce, engraving, and music, while they had only parted temporarily with the crown of painting, which, adding that of learning, they were to resume after Holland had won her independence.

* Taine's “Art in the Netherlands,” p. 58.

CHAPTER II

THE NETHERLANDS BEFORE THE WAR WITH SPAIN

THE GUILDS, THE TOWNS, THE STATE, EDUCATION, RELIGION, AND MORALS

In the preceding chapter I have attempted a brief sketch of the rapid advance made by the Netherlanders in the industrial pursuits and in the arts, down to the middle of the sixteenth century. The important question now arises, What was the effect of this material prosperity and devotion to art on the love of liberty and the religious spirit which we should look for in this people, as an inheritance from their Germanic ancestors?

This question is of interest from many points of view. Thoughtful men in all ages have been more or less inclined to accept their civilization under protest. So much is said of its enervating influence, and such stress is laid upon the virtues of the early heroes who lodged in huts and devoured raw flesh for food, that men have sometimes asked, is it not better that we should return to a state of nature if we wish to keep bright the flame of liberty? In its religious aspect the subject is still more important. Many of the English Puritans were as intolerant as any of their opponents, looked down on art, suspected, if they did not despise, refinement of manners, and seemed bent on weeding joy and beauty out of life, as if their seeds had been implanted by the arch-enemy of man. These men, in many respects such

unworthy professors of a gospel of love, are sometimes held up as examples of earnestness in religion, the theory that they were superior in this respect to other people of their time, and that their descendants have degenerated from their early virtues, underlying much of English and American history as written in some quarters.

The effect of this teaching must be pernicious in its tendency, unless the proper corrective be applied. The men and women of the present generation are coming to use the world in which they live, and to enjoy its beauty and its gladness. The young, often more earnestly thoughtful than their elders, accept the pleasures of life, but, with the grim visages of their vaunted ancestors before them, are inclined at times to feel that joy is somehow sinful, and must be paid for in the end. Looking only at the history of England, seeing the excesses against which Puritanism was there a protest, dwelling on the virtues of our ancestors and not sharply enough distinguishing their faults, all this is natural enough. It seems, indeed, as if the typical English Puritan, as described by some writers, with his long, sad face, suspicion of joy and beauty, narrowness of mind, and intolerance of the beliefs of others, was the embodiment of earnestness itself, and that his descendants, so far as they differ from him, are moving down to a lower plane.* A broader view of history, however, will dispel this delusion, and nowhere can a better corrective be found than in the story of the Netherlands.

Here were a people with largely the same blood as the

* See Carlyle's "Cromwell," and other writings of the same school. Carlyle, it may be noticed, habitually speaks of the Hollanders as "low-minded Dutchmen," because they did not sympathize with all the excesses of the English Puritans.

DUTCH AND ENGLISH PURITANISM

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English, and with the same inherited traits of character, but educated under very different conditions. When now we consider their earnestness for civil and religious liberty, the record of the two nations can scarcely be compared. Some of the English Puritans fled across the Atlantic from a slight religious persecution, and founded a New England. Others remained at home, fought their king in a few pitched battles, and established a commonwealth, which in eleven years went to pieces, simply because the people were unfitted for self-government. The Puritans of Holland battled for their liberties during four fifths of a century, facing not alone the bravest and best-trained soldiers of the age, but flames, the gibbet, flood, siege, pestilence, and famine. Every atrocity that religious fanaticism could invent, every horror that ever followed in the train of war, swept over and desolated their land. To speak in the same breath of the hardships or sufferings of the English Puritan, as if they served to explain his unlovely traits of character, seems almost puerile.

Out from this war of eighty years' duration emerged a republic, for two centuries the greatest in the worlda republic which was the instructor of the world in art, and whose corner-stone was religious toleration for all mankind. Its people had endured everything for civil liberty and for the Protestant religion; but they wore no long, sad faces, nor did they, either at home or in America, put men to death for differing from them in relig ion. (In view of their story, the pernicious theory that earnestness in religion or devotion to the principles of self-government makes men joyless, haters of art, or persecutors of their fellows should be consigned to the abysmal darkness whence it came.) Such a doctrine is one of the most striking illustrations of the cant of history.

The English Puritans, both at home and in America, exhibited great qualities, for which they should receive all honor; but they also exhibited defects, so glaring as, in the minds of many persons, almost to obscure their virtues. The defects, however, as we shall see hereafter, sprang from the condition of English society under which its Puritanism was developed. To charge them to the age, as if all the world were in the same condition, is an offence against historic truth; but that offence is light compared with the crime of charging them to religion or to the love of republican institutions.

Let us now glance at the form of government established in the Netherlands prior to the great revolt from Spain, then at the condition of the people in relation to education, religion, and morals. This is necessary to an understanding of the nature and results of that wonderful struggle, and a comprehension of the mode in which the Dutch Puritans became the instructors of their English brethren.

In 1555, the Emperor Charles V., broken by the gout and wearied of the cares of state, retired to private life. Before entering the monastery in which he was to pass the remainder of his days, he turned over to his son and heir almost all the vast possessions which, wielded by his sturdy arm and directed by his genius, had made him the foremost monarch of the age. His successor, Philip II. of Spain, became by this cession king of all the Spanish kingdoms and of both the Sicilies-" Absolute Dominator," according to the high-flown language of the day, in Asia, Africa, and America-Duke of Milan and of both the Burgundies, and hereditary sovereign of the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands. The last was the richest and fairest jewel in his crown. Of the five millions poured annually into the royal treasury, two came