tury, which saw at its beginning the coronation of Elizabeth, and at its end the death of Cromwell-the age of Grenville, Raleigh, Drake, of Bacon, Shakespeare, and the manhood of Milton-that was the century, in which the arts and arms of England, its resolute temper, and its sagacious and liberal life, were solidly planted upon these shores.

The powerful element brought from Holland, by the Dutch and the Walloons, was only the counterpart of this. An eminent American has made it familiar, in our time, to all who admire heroism in action, and eloquence in story.

Mr. Motley has said of William the Silent, that "his efforts were constant to elevate the middle class; to build up a strong third party, which should unite much of the substantial wealth and intelligence of the land, drawing constantly from the people, and deriving strength from national enthusiasm,—a party which should include nearly all the political capacity of the country; and his efforts were successful." "As to the grandees, they were mostly of those who sought to 'swim between two waters,' according to the Prince's expression." The boers, or laborers, were untrained and coarse, not the material with which to erect an enduring commonwealth; and on this stalwart middle class, trained by churches and common. schools, skilful in enterprise, patient in industry, fervent in patriotism, unconquerable in courage, the illustrious patriot depended, under God, for the safety of his country.

Among the inhabitants of the province of New

1 Rise of the Dutch Republic, Vol. III, page 219.

Netherland, when it came into the English possession, were many representing this class. The early servants of the West India Company had been succeeded by farmers and traders. The patroons of the vast and indefinite manors had, for the most part, tarried at home, and their titles had largely been extinguished. The colonists then here-agriculturists, mechanics, sailors, dealers-represented fairly the commercial, political, social spirit which was prevalent in Holland; and while wolves and Indians filled the forests, which then extended from Canal Street to Harlem, the life in the two separated settlements was much the same as in the equal contemporaneous villages of the Fatherland. Maurice-for whom the Hudson River had first been named-was Stadtholder of the Netherlands, when the permanent settlement was made here; and the clouded luster of his great name was still vivid with a gleam from the past. Only two years before, the contest with Spain had recommenced. During the preceding twelve years' armistice, the United Netherlands had passed through a disastrous interval of religious dissension, ambitious intrigue and popular tumult. But that was now ended; and the first stroke of the Spanish arms, under Spinola, had revived the magnificent tradition of the days when, as their historian has said, "the provinces were united in one great hatred, and one great hope." The interval of peace had not softened the stubbornness of their purpose to be free. They were ready again "to pass through the sea of blood, that they might reach the promised land;" and all that was inspiring in the annals of two preceding generations came out to instant exhibition, as hidden pictures are drawn forth by fire.

The earlier years of Maurice himself, when the twig was becoming the tree-" tandem fit surculus arbor; his following victories, when the renowned Spanish commanders were smitten by him into utter rout, as at Nieuport and at Turnhout; the fatal year of the murder of his father, when the "nation lost its guiding-star, and the little children cried in the streets;" the frightful "Spanish fury" at Antwerp; the siege of Leyden, and the young university which commemorated the heroism of those who had borne it; the siege of Harlem, and all the rage and agony of its close:— these things came up, and multitudes more-the whole panorama in which these were incidents-when the Spaniards sought, in 1622, to open the passage into the North by capturing the town of Bergen-op-Zoom, and when Maurice relieved it. The temper which this tremendous experience, so intense and prolonged, had bred in the Hollanders-the omnipresent, indestructible spirit, not wholly revealed in any one person, but partly in millions-this was again as vigorous as ever, throughout the Republic which it had created, when the thirty families came to this island, when the two hundred persons were resident here, in 1625.

Some of those then here, more who followed, were of the same class, the same occupation and habit of life, with those who had fought for sixty years, on sea and land, against the frenzied assaults of Spain; who, under Heemskirk, had smitten her fleet into utter destruction, beneath the shadow of Gibraltar; who had fought her ships on every wave, and had blown up their own rather than let her flag surmount them; who had more than once opened the dykes, and welcomed the sea, rather than yield to the Spanish pos

session the lands thus drowned; who had ravaged the coasts, and captured the colonies, of the haughty Peninsula; and who, in the midst of all this whirlwind of near and far battle, had been inaugurating new forms of government, cultivating religion, advancing education, developing the arts, draining the lakes, and organizing a commerce that surrounded the world.

When the four Dutch forts were established-at this point, at Harlem, at Fort Orange, on the Delaware,this spirit was simply universal in Holland; and those who came hither could not but bring it, unless they had dropped their identity on the way. They came for trade. They came to purchase lands by labor; to get what they could from the virgin soil, and send peltries and timber back to Holland. But they brought the patience, the enterprise and the courage, the indomitable spirit and the hatred of tyranny, into which they had been born, into which their nation had been baptized with blood.

Education came with them; the free schools, in which Holland had led the van of the world, being early transplanted to these shores; a Latin school being established here in 1659, to which scholars were sent from distant settlements. 1 An energetic Chris

1

"It is very pleasant to reflect that the New England pilgrims, during their residence in the glorious country of your ancestry, found already established there a system of schools which John of Nassau, eldest brother of William the Silent, had recommended in these words: 'You must urge upon the States General that they should establish free schools, where children of quality, as well as of poor families, for a very small sum, could be well and Christianly educated and brought up. This would be the greatest and most useful work you could ever accomplish for God and Christianity, and for the Netherlands themselves.' This was the feeling about popular education in the

tian faith came with them, with its Bibles, its ministers, its interpreting books. Four years before, Grotius, imprisoned in the castle of Louvestein, had written his notes upon the Scriptures, and that treatise on the Truth of the Christian Religion, which, within the same century, was translated from the original Dutch into Latin, English, French, Flemish, German, Swedish, Persian, Arabic, the language of Malacca, and modern Greek. He had written it, he says, for the instruction of sailors; that they might read it in the leisure of the voyage, as he had written it in the leisure of confinement, and might carry the impression of that Christianity whose divinity it affirmed, around the globe. Copies of it may easily have come hither in the vessels of the nation which had no forests, but which owned more ships than all Europe beside.

The political life of the Hollanders had come, as well as their commercial spirit, and their decisive religious faith. They loved the liberty for which they and their fathers had tenaciously fought. They saw its utilities, and understood its conditions; and if you recall the motto of the Provinces, in their earlier struggle "Concordia, res parvæ crescunt; Discordia, maximæ dilabuntur "-and if you add a pregnant sentence from their Declaration of Independence, made in July, 1581, I think you will have some fair impression of the influences which afterward wrought in this land, transported hither by those colonists. "When the Prince," says that Declaration, "does not fulfil

Netherlands, during the 16th century."-Mr. Motley's Letter to St. Nicholas Society; quoted in address of Hon. J. W. Beekman, 1869, pages 30, 31.