In the nature of things, she could not have been otherwise.  The little country of Holland, that in 1555, on the accession of Philip II to the sovereignty, was the richest jewel in his crown, and of the five millions poured annually into his treasury contributed nearly half, emerged as a republic out of the war with Spain of eighty years’ duration, and remained for two full centuries the greatest republic in the world.  She has been the instructor of the world in art, in music, in science; has outstripped other nations in the commercial race; had wealth and luxury, palaces and architectural splendor, when England’s yeomanry lived in huts and never ate a vegetable; discovered oil-painting, originated portrait and landscape-painting, was foremost in all the mechanical arts; invented wood-engraving, printing from blocks, and gave to the world both telescope and microscope, thus furnishing the implements to see the largest things of the heavens above, and the smallest of both earth beneath and waters under the earth.  The corner-stone was liberty, and especially religious liberty and toleration.  As such Holland could not have been other than the sanctuary for the rights of mankind.  The great number of Englishmen in the Netherlands, and the reciprocal influence of the Netherlands upon these Englishmen—­an influence all too little marked by English historians—­prepared the way for transplanting to this country the seeds from which has sprung the large tree beneath the bounteous shade of which nearly seventy millions of people take shelter to-day, and, while they rest, rejoice in full security of their rights and their freedom.

Two hundred years ago, the English courtiers about Charles II, regardless of the fact that the Netherlands had been the guide and the instructor of England in almost everything which had made her materially great, regarded the Dutchman as a boor, plain and ill-mannered, and wanting in taste, because as a republican the Hollander thought it a disgrace to have his wife or his daughter debauched by king or noble.  From the aristocratic point of view, the Dutchman was not altogether a gentleman.  To-day we have some representatives of the Charles II courtiers, who affect to ape the English, and would, no doubt, despise the Dutch.  But he who appreciates the genuine meaning of a man, born in the image and living in the fear of his God, has nothing but direst disgust for a dude, nothing but the rarest respect for a Dutchman.

MARION J. VERDERY

THE SOUTH IN WALL STREET

[Speech of Marion J. Verdery at the third annual banquet of the Southern Society of New York, February 22, 1889.  The President, John C. Calhoun, presided, and in introducing Mr. Verdery, said:  “The next toast is ‘The South in Wall Street.’  What our friend Mr. Verdery has to say in response to this toast I’m sure I don’t know; but if he proposes to tell us how there is any money for