A Year in Europe

One or two other facts which may well be pondered by High Churchmen have been brought to light by the census of church attendance in London, recently taken by the Daily News of that city. The census shows that, while more than one-half of the five millions of people in London are Christian worshippers, there has been a decrease in church attendance of over one hundred thousand since 1886, that this decrease has been almost entirely in the congregations of the Church of England, and that the attendance in the Established and Nonconformist churches is now about equal.

The census shows further that in wealthy districts the Established Church, as we might expect, has the majority. As was also expected, Nonconformists have a majority in middle-class districts. But, contrary to all expectations, Nonconformists are a majority in the working-class districts and among the very poor. It was often said that only the ritualists were getting hold of the poor, and many supposed the Salvation Army was doing great things amongst the lowest people. It is one of the surprises of the census that ritualism fails to attract the non-churchgoing classes.

In the proportion of the sexes present, in almost all cases the Episcopal churches showed two women to one man; in nonconformist churches the proportion of men was greater, being two men to three women. Does not this preponderance of men in the nonconformist congregations indicate clearly that if the Church of England is to retain her hold upon men she must lay less stress upon the appeal to the æsthetic sensibilities and more upon the appeal to the mind; that she must make less of the ornamental features of public worship and more of the didactic; less of millinery, music and marching, and more of the preaching of the gospel? As the British Weekly puts it:

"The great means of attracting the people is Christian preaching. Whenever a preacher appears, no matter what his denomination is, he has a great audience. Nothing makes up for a failure in preaching. The churches of all denominations, if they are wise, will give themselves with increased zeal and devotion to the training of the Christian ministry. I have no doubt that it is for lack of a trained order of preachers that the Salvation Army has failed in London. Nor will any magnificence of ritual or any musical attractions, or any lectures on secular subjects, permanently attract worshippers. It can be done only by Christian preaching."

In this connection the following clipping from The Evangelist is not without interest, as showing that both the disease and the remedy are at least partially recognized by some observers within the English Church:

"A recent writer in The Guardian, one of the leading Church of England papers, laments the decay of preaching within his own communion, and is forced to contrast the conditions obtaining in Presbyterian churches with those which prevail in Episcopalian ones, to the obvious disadvantage of the latter. While it is true that the Church of England has some great preachers, as it always has had, the ordinary village vicar is scarcely mediocre. Such is not the case among the Presbyterians—in Scotland, with which the writer is familiar—or in America, Canada, Australia, or in missionary lands, where the same standards and ideals are in effect. Here are the characteristics of Presbyterian preaching as described by a Church of England critic:

"'Their ministry lays itself out for the cultivation of prophetical power, and not without success. In general, they are students of Hebrew, which the English clergy are not. The consequence is that for a good Old Testament sermon you must go north of the Tweed. In England we confine ourselves almost exclusively to the New Testament, not merely because of its transcendent importance, but because it is ground with which we are more familiar. But the loss to our people is great.

"'Then, again, the Scottish ministers are students of German theology. More or less they are at home in the writings of the great German thinkers, both orthodox and liberal. We, as a rule, are not....

"'One more point. In travelling through Palestine some years ago, with a view to the study of biblical geography, I was greatly struck with the preponderance of Scottish ministers who were there on the same purpose intent. I think it no exaggeration to say that they were in numbers to the English clergy as five to one. Evidently they regard it as a necessary part of that same biblical equipment they are so careful about, that they should with their own eyes realize the scenes of the sacred narrative. A pilgrimage to the Holy Land is now so easy, and is, moreover, to any thoughtful Christian teacher so fruitful in results, that it is a marvel it should not be made an ordinary addition to a university or theological college course. To any one who will go with a reverent mind and open eyes, and with his Bible as his Baedeker, it is an unparalleled experience for life. If it is objected to on the score of expense, I ask, How do the Presbyterian ministers, and a large proportion of Nonconformist ministers also, manage to accomplish it?'"

The Guardian itself, in an editorial comment on the decreasing attendance of men in the Anglican churches, says frankly that a large number of men are "repelled by the extremely low standard of preaching which prevails, and the comparative success of Nonconformity may be due in part to the attention which is devoted to the preparation of the sermon." "Another source of offence is the over-elaboration of musical services, and the practical exclusion of the congregation from any real share in prayer and praise. It is a fatal policy which drives the devout but unmusical away from our churches to chapels in which they can find greater simplicity and greater heartiness. One of the surprises of the census has been that the Nonconformists have been found to be strong not only in middle-class districts, but in the regions where poverty abounds. The poor, we believe, are attracted by greater simplicity, and it must be acknowledged that the services of our Prayer-Book are difficult for the uninstructed to follow and to appreciate. There is a stage at which a greater elasticity of worship is needed, and for this we make no adequate provision."

According to the latest statistics, the relative strength of the Established Church and the free evangelical churches is as follows:

CHAPTER XXIII.

We secured quiet and comfortable quarters close to the lovely Madeleine Church and only two blocks from the Place de la Concorde, the finest square in Europe, with the Seine on one side, the Tuileries Gardens on another, the Champs Élysées leading from it in one direction, and the Rue de Rivoli in the other. London, as we have seen, is a dingy congeries of dingy towns built mostly of dingy bricks. Paris is sunny and bright, the streets are wide and clean, and the houses are uniformly handsome, being built of a light stone that gives the whole city an air of elegance. No doubt it is the most beautiful city in the world, it has a glitter and sparkle unmatched elsewhere,—but, gay as it seems, it has more suicides than any other city.

We submitted to it, but could not enjoy the French custom of taking our morning rolls and coffee in bed. There are many other French customs constantly in evidence in Paris, but not to be described here, to which I trust our English and American people will never become accustomed. Modesty is not prominent among the virtues of the French, though of course there must be many good people among them. Vice flaunts itself more in Paris than in any city I have ever seen. There is a certain brazen shamelessness even in French art that one does not see in New York or London. But the collection in the Louvre is one of the richest aggregations of antiquarian and artistic objects in the world, and surely no museum was ever so splendidly housed. The Moabite Stone, the oldest extant Hebrew inscription, was one of the things that we made a point of seeing. As we passed to another part of the great building, we had the pleasure of seeing the celebrated DeWet and the other Boer generals who were visiting Paris at that time.

In the rear of the Louvre stands the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois. It was from the bell-tower of this church that the signal was given for the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. On the other side of the Rue de Rivoli, and in plain view of this fateful tower, stands the pure white marble statue of Admiral Coligni, the most illustrious victim of that fearful massacre. What France needs to-day is the influence of that Huguenot element which she slaughtered and expelled at that time.

Several names which are now among the most illustrious in the history of the world were originally used as terms of reproach. When Abram left his home in Chaldea and crossed the great boundary stream between the East and the West and settled in Palestine, the Canaanites dubbed him "the Hebrew," that is, the man who crossed over the Euphrates—intruder, interloper. But for ages "Hebrew" has been the honored designation of one of the most gifted and enterprising of the races of mankind. It is not unlikely that the name "Christian" was first applied in a contemptuous sense to the disciples of our Lord at Antioch. It is well known that the name of "Methodist," which is now the honored designation of a large, active and devoted body of the people of God, was at first given to the followers of Wesley in a spirit of ridicule and derision. In like manner, the name "Huguenot," according to its most probable derivation from a French word meaning a kind of hobgoblin of darkness, a night-wanderer, was given to the Protestants of that country, because there were times in their early history when, for fear of persecution, they dared not meet except under cover of darkness. But this term of reproach has gathered about itself all the glory that belongs to genius and skill in the useful arts, to industry, thrift and purity in the home, to patriotic valor on the field of battle, and to unpurchasable and unconquerable devotion to principle, and is now a name that is venerated by every clear-headed and sound-hearted and well-informed and unprejudiced person in the world. It is a name which will wear forever the red halo of martyrdom. By the Massacre of St. Bartholomew alone thirty-five thousand names were added to the church's crimson roll of martyrs, with that of the great Admiral Coligni leading the list. By the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the refusal of Louis XIV. to tolerate any exercise of the Protestant religion in France, while at the same time punishing inexorably all who attempted to escape from France, nearly half a million Huguenots were driven into exile, sacrificing their homes, their property and their country rather than renounce their religion; and Sismondi estimates that some four hundred thousand others perished in prison, on the scaffold, at the galleys, and in their attempts to escape.

On our visit to the celebrated Porcelain Works at Sevres, a few miles below Paris on the Seine, our interest centered less in any of the works of art shown inside than in the fine bronze figure in front of the building which represents Bernard Palissy, natural philosopher, chemist, geologist, artist, political economist, Christian hero and author, of whom Lamartine himself said, "This potter was one of the greatest writers of the French tongue. Montaigne does not excel him in freedom, Rousseau in vigor, La Fontaine in grace, Bossuet in lyric energy." He was the inventor of enamelled pottery. For fifteen years he pursued his search for the secret of his art, scorned as a visionary, suspected of being a counterfeiter, reproached by his wife for the scanty living he provided for his family, sitting by his fire for six successive days and nights without changing his clothes, and, in his last desperate experiment, when fuel began to run short and still the enamel did not melt, rushing into the house, breaking up his furniture and hurling that into the furnace to keep up the heat—his long and furious search being rewarded at last by the appearance of the beautiful white glaze which has made him famous. His transcendant merits as an artist were then fully recognized, and the Duke of Montmorency and Catherine de Medici became his patrons, the latter appointing him to decorate the gardens of the palace of the Tuileries. But in the meantime he had founded the Reformed Church at Saintes, and had revolutionized the morals of the community. He was seized, dragged from his home, and hurried off by night to be punished as a heretic. And the most brilliant genius of France would certainly have been burnt, as hundreds of others were, but for the accidental circumstance that the Duke of Montmorency was in urgent need of enamelled tiles for his castle floor, and Palissy was the only man in the world capable of executing them.

Few scenes in history can match that in the Bastile when this aged and gifted man lay chained to the floor, and Henry III., standing over him, and referring to the forty-five years of faithful and splendid service which Palissy had rendered, said, "I am now compelled to leave you to your enemies, and to-morrow you will be burnt unless you become a Roman Catholic." Then the fearless answer: "Sire, you have often said you pity me. I now pity you. 'Compelled!' It is not spoken like a king. These girls, my companions, and I, who have a portion in the kingdom of heaven, will teach you royal language. I cannot be compelled to do wrong. Neither you nor the Guises will know how to compel a potter to bow the knee to images."

French Protestantism is rich also in memories of heroic women. There is the record, for example, of Charlotte de Laval, sitting by her husband, Admiral Coligni, on the balcony of their castle, and asking, "Husband, why do you not openly avow your faith, as your brother Andelot has done?" "Sound your own soul," was his reply; "are you prepared to be chased into exile with your children, and to see your husband hunted to the death? I will give you three weeks to consider, and then I will take your advice." She looked at him a moment through her tears, and said, "Husband, the three weeks are ended; do your duty, and leave us to God." The world knows well the sequel.

Surely no right-minded person can refuse to honor such sacrifices for principle, such loyalty to conscience, such devotion to Christ. The Huguenots could have remained peaceful and prosperous in their own country had they but been willing to conform to the Romish religion.

The views I am expressing are not determined merely by my Protestant birth and training. In proof of this, let me quote to you the words of the Duke of Saint Simon, himself a Roman Catholic and a courtier of Louis XIV.: "The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes ... as well as the various proscriptions that followed, were the fruits of that horrible conspiracy which depopulated a fourth part of the kingdom, ruined its trade, weakened it throughout, surrendered it for so long a time to open and avowed pillage by the dragoons, and authorized the torments and sufferings by means of which they procured the death of so many persons of both sexes and by thousands together.... A plot that caused our manufactures to pass over into the hands of foreigners, made their states to flourish and grow populous at the expense of our own, and enabled them to build new cities. A plot that presented to the nations the spectacle of so vast a multitude of people, who had committed no crime, proscribed, denuded, fleeing, wandering, seeking an asylum afar from their country. A plot that consigned the noble, the wealthy, the aged, those highly esteemed for their piety, their learning, their virtue, those accustomed to a life of ease, frail, delicate, to hard labor in the galleys, under the driver's lash, and for no reason save that of their religion."

Such are the blistering words of this eminent Roman Catholic nobleman in regard to the policy of the church of which he was a member. If a fair-minded member of that communion can thus condemn these horrible iniquities and thus extol the persecuted Huguenots as the best people in France, surely no Protestant should ever hesitate about recognizing clearly the world's debt to this pure and heroic people. And no well-informed Protestant ever does. The Rev. Dr. Croly, of the Church of England, late rector of St. Stephens, in London, expresses the opinion of all who know the facts when he says: "The Protestant Church of France was for half a century unquestionably one of the most illustrious churches in Europe. It held the gospel in singular purity. Its preachers were apostolic. Its people the purest, most intellectual and most illustrious of France."

Now that is the church which was all but stamped out of existence by the fierce persecutions of the papacy two hundred years ago. And it is the remnant of that glorious church which now calls on all Christians to help it to give once more the pure gospel to priest-ridden, infidel France, and to deliver the nation from that fearful succession of bloody revolutions and Panama scandals and Dreyfus outrages and shameless immoralities which have so largely constituted the history of that unhappy land since it butchered and banished the only class of its people who would have effectually kept its conscience true, its morality pure, and its institutions stable and sound.

Do we owe the Huguenots anything? Yes, the whole world is indebted to them. What France lost the other nations gained. The emigration of the Huguenots gave a death-blow to several great branches of French industry. The population of Nantes was reduced from eighty thousand to forty thousand, a blow to its prosperity from which it has not recovered to this day. Of twelve thousand artisans engaged in the manufacture of silk at Lyons, nine thousand went to Switzerland. The most skilled artisans, the wealthiest merchants, the bravest sailors and soldiers, the most eminent scholars and scientists went by thousands to Germany, Holland, England, enriching those lands in money and morals beyond computation.

The cause of civil and religious liberty is deeply indebted to the Huguenots. It was Oliver Cromwell, "the greatest prince that ever ruled England," who raised Britain to her present position of power and gave her the dominion of the seas. But it was William of Orange who completed Cromwell's work after the temporary reaction in favor of Rome and the Stuarts. It was the battle of the Boyne which finally decided that Great Britain and America were to be Protestant countries and not Romish. And do you know who it was that won the day for William on the banks of the Boyne? It was the three regiments of Huguenot infantry and the squadron of Huguenot cavalry hurled upon the Papists at the critical moment by the Huguenot, Marshal Schomberg. That is a part of your debt to the Huguenots for the civil and religious liberty which you enjoy to-day.

In the Franco-German War of 1870, many of the officers of the victorious army of invasion were descendants of the Huguenots whom Louis XIV. expatriated.

The King of England himself is of Huguenot blood, George I. having married Dorothea, granddaughter of the Marquis d'Olbreuse, who was one of the Huguenot refugees to Brandenburg after the Revocation. Time would fail me to tell of all the scholars, scientists and noblemen of England who have sprung from the same great stock, such as Grote, the historian of Greece, Sydney Smith, the Martineaus, Garrick the actor, and a great number of gifted clergymen of the Church of England.

Many of the French churches established in London and other parts of England by the exiles have contributed for centuries to the vigorous religious life of Britain. For three hundred and fifty years the Presbyterian Huguenots and the Episcopal Englishmen have worshipped in different portions of Canterbury Cathedral, and to this day the Huguenot Church at Canterbury continues to conduct its worship in the cathedral in French, singing the psalms to the old Huguenot tunes. But for the most part, the exiles have become merged with the English, and their names have been Anglicised. In every way Britain has been enriched and blessed by the infusion of Huguenot blood and genius.

What America owes to Huguenot immigration you know. Had the Huguenots given us only Hugh Swinton Legare, John Jay, Francis Marion, and Commodore Maury, "the pathfinder of the seas," we should have owed them an everlasting debt of gratitude. But when we remember what they have been in Virginia itself—the Maurys, Maryes, Michauxs, Flournoys, Dupuys, Fontaines, Moncures, Fauntleroys, Latanes, Mauzys, Lacys, Venables, Dabneys, and many others—we cannot fail to see that we are under great and lasting obligation to that heroic race, whose banishment, while it resulted in the moral ruin of France, resulted in the moral enrichment of America. And we should count it a privilege to do what we can to retrieve the religious ruin of misguided France by giving her once more the pure Huguenot gospel. From a statement published by the Rev. J. E. Knatz, B. D., Delegate of the Huguenot Churches of France to America, I take the following facts:

The population of France is composed of six hundred thousand Protestants and nearly thirty-nine million Catholics. The former are mostly descendants of the Huguenots. In spite of centuries of persecution, which reduced them to a mere handful, they have not only kept their ground, but made important advance. They are the strongest bulwark of republican institutions. In the Dreyfus trial, they were foremost in forming a better public opinion, fighting the hardest for the triumph of truth and justice. Lately a Catholic paper had to admit, reluctantly, that for the last twenty-five years the war waged against intemperance, immorality and other social evils, had been the work of the Protestants.

Outside of France the Huguenots carry on a great missionary work in the French colonies, which are many and extensive. The religious reorganization of Madagascar alone cost them two hundred thousand dollars.

In France they have to care for the spiritual welfare of an ever-increasing number of non-Protestant communities. The movement toward Protestantism is making great progress in the rural districts, the population of which, all Catholics, had been hitherto indifferent or bigoted. New Huguenot churches are springing up on all sides, often in places where Protestant worship had been abolished for over two hundred years.

The tears and blood our fathers shed, the torments they suffered on scaffolds and stakes, are bringing forth fruit after many years, and "the harvest is truly plenteous." In two departments of Central France alone, forty-five villages have, within a single year, besought our societies for regular Protestant services. To this church extension work alone the French Protestants contribute one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars annually.

Congregations of two hundred members (not one of whom was brought up in the evangelical faith), Sunday-schools of fifty children (none of whom a year before had ever heard of the Bible), are common results of our work.

Other missionary enterprises have to devise means of attracting audiences. With us there is no such difficulty, crowds gather wherever we are able to send ministers.

Where in the whole world could be found so promising a mission field—one ready to yield such rich returns? Where could be found people so eager to listen to the preaching of the gospel, and to have their children taught its lessons?

As well as a most promising, France is a most important mission field. The conversion, within the next few years, of some thousands of French people, would be of incalculable value to the religious and moral welfare of the world, for France exerts a mighty influence throughout the world. Moreover, the outlay would be comparatively small.

There are men willing to bring the Bread of Life to the hungering crowds for a mere pittance, prompted, not by any worldly motive, but by the Spirit of God.

The salary of a minister is only four hundred dollars. This amount will send one more to some of the many localities from which urgent appeals have come; it will open a new district to the permanent influence of the gospel.

No movement of such size and promise has been witnessed in France since the time of the Reformation. It is the old light, the eternal light from above, dawning again on France, illuminating the approach of a new century and bringing hope for the future.

Let the Christians of America help the Huguenot Church of France in this great work of hers.

At the American Church in Paris, whose pastor, the Rev. Dr. Thurber, showed us many courtesies, we had the pleasure, a few days ago, of hearing a very striking address by the Rev. Merle D'Aubigné, son of the well-known historian of the Reformation, which abounded with equally awakening facts as to the present religious condition of France.

Paris is not only one of the most brilliant, but one of the most interesting cities in the world, from almost every point of view, and we revelled in its museums and monuments; but its memories of the Huguenots had more interest for us than anything else, and we have thought it best to devote our space to that subject rather than to the Louvre, the tomb of Napoleon, Notre Dame, Versailles, Fontainebleau, and the scores of other fascinating places and subjects that appeal to one's interest in this ancient, gay, and terrible city.

We had a rainy day at Brussels and a cold one on the battlefield of Waterloo, but were not deterred from seeing them by these conditions of the weather. Then, with a comfortable feeling, almost like the feeling one has on coming home after journeying in strange lands, we crossed from Roman Catholic France and Belgium into Protestant Holland.

CHAPTER XXIV.

As the two most common names of this country themselves suggest, Holland meaning Hollow Land, and Netherlands meaning Lowlands, the greater part of it is from twenty to thirty feet below the level of the ocean; that is to say, the sea actually rolls some ten yards higher than the ground on which the people live. Hence the common remark, in which, however, there is some exaggeration, that the frog, croaking among the bulrushes, looks down upon the swallow on the housetops, and that the ships float high above the chimneys of the houses.

Of course, then, there is the ever-present danger that the ocean will break in and again overspread all this fair territory where its waters once rolled, and only by the most remarkable ingenuity, the most incessant vigilance, and the most untiring industry can it be prevented from doing so. Water is the immemorial enemy of the Dutch. They are trained at college to fight against water, as in other lands soldiers are trained to fight against the human foes of their country. They are compelled to wage a perpetual battle for their very existence, for, as some one has expressed it, as soon as they cease to pump they begin to drown. It costs the Dutch people about six million dollars a year to keep their country above water, or, to speak more accurately, to keep the water above it. If one wishes to appreciate the imminence of this danger, he has only to stand for a few minutes at the foot of one of the great dykes on the coast, at high tide, and listen to the waves dashing against the outer side of the barrier, twenty feet above his head.

Of course, the explanation of all this lies in the fact that Holland is of alluvial formation. Like Lower Egypt and some other regions at the mouths of great rivers, it is a delta land, the soil of which has been carried down from the interior by the Rhine and deposited here, little by little, in the course of the ages; so that Napoleon Bonaparte is said to have laid claim to the country on the whimsical plea that it was land robbed from other countries which were his by right of conquest. Moreover this particular delta lies farther below sea level than any other, Holland, as a whole, being the lowest country in the world. These vast and costly embankments are therefore absolutely necessary to shut the ocean out and keep it out. The Dutch proverb says, "God made the sea, we made the shore."

But that is not all. In many places the dykes are no less necessary to prevent the country from being overflowed by the rivers, the beds of which have been gradually raised by alluvial deposits, so that now the surface of the water is considerably above the level of the surrounding country, as is the case in our own land with the Mississippi river at New Orleans.

These huge ramparts, by which the sea has been made to obey the command of Canute, sometimes rise to a height of not less than thirty-six feet, and rest upon massive foundations a hundred and fifty feet wide. They are made of earth, sand and mud thoroughly consolidated so as to be impervious to water, and the surface is covered with interwoven willow twigs, the interstices being filled with clay, and the whole thus bound into a solid mass. Many of the dykes are planted with trees, the roots of which help to bind the materials of the structure more firmly together. Others are protected by bulwarks of masonry or by stakes driven along the sides, the surface being covered with turf.

In addition to the directly aggressive action of the water, the sea has made trouble for the Hollanders in another way. Along the coast, low sand hills, from thirty to a hundred and fifty feet high, have been thrown up by the action of the wind and the waves, and, as these dunes, if left to themselves, are continually changing their shape, shifting their position, and scattering their loose sand over the fertile land adjacent, the people, in order to prevent this, sow them annually with reed-grass and other plants which will sprout in such poor soil, and the roots, spreading and intertwining in every direction, gradually consolidate the sand, form a substratum of vegetable soil, and convert the arid sand dunes into stable and productive agricultural regions.

Having thus made his land by walling out the sea and the rivers, and by anchoring those portions of it which were too much disposed to travel about, the Dutchman's next task was to provide drains for removing the superfluous water from the cultivated land, fences for enclosing the portion belonging to each individual farmer and separating it from that of his neighbor, and highways for communication and traffic between the different parts of the country. By means of canals he made the conquered water serve all three of these purposes. The whole country is a network of canals, which stretch their shining lengths in every direction, and which are of all sizes, from the main thoroughfares, sixty feet wide and six feet deep, along which glide the great barges laden with merchandise and drawn by sedate horses, down to the ditches of five or six feet which mark the boundaries of separate farms or divide the fields of each farmer from one another, canals being used in this way as uniformly as hedges and fences are in other lands.

Remembering, as already stated, that not only the surface of the water, but the beds of the larger canals are often considerably above the level of the surrounding country, it will be seen that the problem of drainage was not an easy one. The Dutch solved it by making the wind work for them. On every hand are seen windmills, larger and stronger here than in any other country, swinging their huge arms, and pumping up the superfluous water from the low lying ground to the canals, which carry it to the sea. These mills are used also for grinding grain, cutting tobacco, sawing timber, manufacturing paper, and many other things for which we use water mills or steam mills.

Of late, however, windmills have been to a large extent superseded by steam engines for purposes of drainage, especially in the making of polders, as they call the marshes or lakes, the beds of which have been reclaimed by draining. In this process, which is still actively carried on by speculators, the morass or lake to be drained is first enclosed with a dyke to prevent the entrance of any water from without. Then the water within is removed by means of peculiarly constructed water-wheels, driven by steam engines. Sometimes the lake is so deep that the water cannot be lifted directly to the main canal, and thus be carried off, and when this is the case a series of dykes and canals at different levels has to be made, and the water transferred successively from one to another. The land thus reclaimed is wonderfully fertile, since in wet seasons superfluous water can always be quickly removed, and in dry seasons thorough irrigation can be effected still more easily and quickly.

If these polders could be looked down upon from a balloon, they would have a very artificial appearance, something like gigantic checker-boards, as they have been mapped out with mathematical precision, divided into rectangular plots by straight canals and straight rows of trees, and furnished with houses all built on exactly the same pattern.

The most stupendous work of this kind ever projected is the proposed construction of an embankment which would convert the Zuider Zee into a vast lagoon, with an area of 1,400 square miles, two-thirds of which could be made into a polder. It is estimated that the work would cost $75,000,000.

It is evident, therefore, that this little nation, which has accomplished such wonders in making its own land and in keeping it from being swallowed up by the sea after it was made, and which has in the past done such great things for liberty and learning, for manufactures and commerce, is still capable of great enterprises.

No boy or girl who has read Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates can ever think of Holland with indifference. No man or woman who has read Motley's stirring history of the heroic little republic in the Rhine delta can ever enter the Netherlands without a feeling of the liveliest interest. No lover of liberty who recalls the sufferings and services of the Dutch Calvinists in the cause of freedom, and the glorious victory they achieved against tremendous odds, can set foot on that sacred soil without a thrill of reverent gratitude.

Such were some of the memories with which our hearts were warmed as our train from Brussels began to cross the bridges over the broad estuaries that make in from the sea through the low, flat country, in the neighborhood of Dordrecht and Rotterdam, and to run through an unmistakably Dutch landscape, with bright green fields divided into rectangular sections by hundreds of shining canals, and occupied by innumerable herds of black and white Holstein cattle, not a few of them actually wearing jackets, apparently made of burlaps or bagging, to protect them from the dampness; with level roads running along the tops of the dykes several yards above the surrounding country, and sedate looking horses drawing old-fashioned wagons, and brisk looking dogs drawing clattering milk carts, with their cargo of burnished cans; with innumerable rows of willow trees, the twigs of which the people use to make the covering of the dykes, and the wood of which they use to make their heavy, pointed shoes, or sabots; with picturesque houses roofed with red tiles, and broad-built peasants working in the fields, wearing those same wooden sabots, and clean looking market women trudging into the towns in their exceedingly picturesque head-dress of gold helmets covered with lace caps; with stiff, symmetrical gardens, and trees clipped into fantastic shapes; with quaint old church steeples and gilded weather-cocks; and ever and anon a weather-beaten windmill swinging its great arms between us and the low horizon. This was Holland, beyond a doubt.

An interesting indication of the important part played by the dykes in the development of Holland is the number of towns which have been named from the dyke or dam originally built on a site, such as Rotterdam, Schiedam, Amsterdam, and so on. The first important place we passed was Rotterdam, the most active seaport of Holland, with a population of three hundred and twenty thousand, and from the high railway bridge on which we crossed the Maas we had a good view of the boompjes, as they call the magnificent quays, which, with their graceful fringe of trees and their tangled forest of shipping, line the banks of the river for a mile and a half. We caught a glimpse also of the bronze statue of Erasmus, the Dutch scholar, who, as some say, "laid the egg which Luther hatched." On a former visit to Rotterdam I had seen the birthplace of this illustrious man, bearing on its front the inscription, "Haec est parva domus, magnus qua natus Erasmus" (this is the little house in which great Erasmus was born.)

Leaving Rotterdam, we pass on our left Delftshaven, from which a party of the Pilgrim Fathers sailed to America in 1620; then Schiedam, noted for its "schnapps," of which there are more than two hundred distilleries; then Delft, where William the Silent, the immortal founder of Dutch independence, was assassinated by a Jesuit whom the Roman Catholic persecutors of the Netherlands had hired to rid them of their great foeman, but which, I fear, is better known to some of my readers as the place where a certain blue-glazed earthenware used to be made in imitation of Chinese porcelain; and then, fifteen miles from Rotterdam, The Hague, one of the handsomest towns in Holland, with the Royal Palace, and in a lovely park outside the city the royal villa, called The House in the Wood, and two miles away on the sea the fashionable watering-place of Scheveningen, and in the city itself scrupulously clean and bright houses on every hand, where its two hundred thousand people live, and, above all, the picture gallery, with its two world-renowned paintings by Rembrandt and Potter, to say nothing of others scarcely inferior, if at all so, such as Vermeer's "View of Delft," with its red and blue roofs partly lit up with yellow sunlight, a simple view which "is perhaps unmatched by any other landscape in the world for the truthfulness of its atmospheric and light effects and for the vigor and brilliance of its coloring." Paul Potter's "Young Bull" is a marvellous picture, but the one which demands and repays the longest study is Rembrandt's "School of Anatomy," which shows us the celebrated Nicolaas Tulp, in black coat, lace collar and broad-brimmed soft hat, explaining the anatomy of the arm of a corpse to a body of surgeons, who listen to the lecture with the most life-like expressions, and which has been happily characterized as the truest and most life-like representation of the "working of intellect" ever produced.