“There is no nation in Europe,” continues the professor, “which owes more to Holland than Great Britain does.  The English were for a long time, in the industrial history of modern civilization, the stupidest and most backward nation in Europe.  There was, to be sure, a great age in England during the reign of Elizabeth and that of the first Stuart king.  But it was brief indeed.  In every other department of art, of agriculture, of trade, we learned our lesson from the Hollanders.  I doubt whether any other small European race, after passing through the trials which it endured after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle to the conclusion of the continental war, ever had so entire a recovery.  The chain of its history, to be sure, was broken, and can never, in the nature of things, be welded together.  But there is still left to Holland the boast and the reality of her motto, ‘Luctor et emergo.’”

The events of Holland’s history since the Catholic concessions can be briefly told.  In 1863 slavery was abolished in the Dutch West Indies, the owners being compensated; and forty-two thousand slaves were set free, chiefly in Dutch Guiana.  In the same year the navigation of the Scheldt was freed, by purchase from Holland by the European powers, of the right to levy tolls.  In 1867, Louis Napoleon raised the question of Luxemburg by negotiating to buy the grand duchy from Holland; but Prussia objected to the scheme, and the matter was finally settled by a Conference in London; the Prussian garrison evacuating the fortifications, which were then dismantled, and Luxemburg was declared neutral territory.  Capital punishment was abolished in 1869; and on the 15th of July of the same year the Amsterdam National Exposition was opened by Prince Henry.  In 1870, at the outbreak of war between Germany and France, the neutrality of Holland as to both belligerents was secured by the other Powers.  In 1871 the Hollanders ceded Dutch Guinea to England, and in 1876 the canal between Amsterdam and the North Sea, which had been begun in 1865, was completed, and the passage through it was accomplished by a monitor.  Another Exposition was opened in 1883, and in the same year the constitution underwent a further revision.  On the 24th of June, 1884, the Prince of Orange, heir-apparent to the throne, died, and the succession thus devolved upon the princess Wilhelmina, then a child of four years.  William III. himself died in 1890, and Queen Emma thereupon assumed the regency, which she was to hold until Wilhelmina came of age in 1898; an agreeable consummation which we have just witnessed.

A word may here be said concerning the physical and political constitution of the present kingdom of Holland.  The country is divided into eleven provinces—­North and South Holland, Zealand, North Brabant, Utrecht, Limburg, Gelderland, Overyssel, Drenthe, Groningen, and Friesland.  There are three large rivers—­the Rhine, the Meuse, and the Scheldt.  The inhabitants are Low Germans (Dutch), Frankish, Saxon, Frisian,