Agriculture is generally pursued, but without the extreme science and economy shown in Belgium.  The cultivation and produce vary, in part, according as the soil is sand or clay; but the same kind of soil, in different parts of the country, produces different results.  Cattle are largely raised and are of first-rate quality; Friesland produces the best, but there are also excellent stocks in North Holland and South Holland.  In Drenthe, owing to the extensive pasturage, great numbers of sheep are raised.  But perhaps the most important industry of Holland is the fisheries, both those of the deep sea, and those carried on in the great Zuyder Zee, which occupies a vast area within the boundaries of the country.  These fisheries, however, are not in all years successful, owing to the ungovernable vagaries of ocean currents, and other causes.

Holland has taken a prominent part in European thought since about 1820.  The Dutch language, instead of yielding to the domination of the German, has been cultivated and enriched.  The writers who have achieved distinction could hardly even be named in space here available, and any approach to a critical estimate of them would require volumes.  One of the earlier but best-known names is that of Jacobus Van Lennep, who is regarded as the leader of the Dutch Romantic school.  He was born in Amsterdam on the 24th of March, 1802, and died at Oosterbeek, near Arnheim, August 25, 1868.  His father, David, was a professor and a poet; Jacobus studied jurisprudence at Leyden, and afterward practiced law at Amsterdam.  For a while he took some part in politics as a member of the second chamber; but his heart was bent on the pursuit of literature, and he gradually abandoned all else for that.  His first volume of poems was published when he was but four-and-twenty; and he was the author of several dramas.  But his strongest predilections were for romantic novel-writing; and his works in this direction show signs of the influence of Walter Scott, who dominated the romantic field in the first half of this century, and was known in Holland as well as throughout the rest of Europe.  “The Foster Son” was published in 1829; the “Rose of Dekama” in 1836; “The Adventures of Claus Sevenstars” in 1865.  His complete works, in prose and poetry, fill six-and-thirty volumes.  A younger contemporary of Van Lennep was Nikolas Beets, born at Haarlem in 1814; he also was both poet and prose writer, and his “Camara Obscura,” published in 1839, is accounted a masterpiece of character and humor, though it was composed when the author was barely twenty-four years of age.  Van den Brink was a leading critic of the Romanticists; Hasebrock, author of a volume of essays called “Truth and Dream,” has been likened to the English Charles Lamb.  Vosmaer is another eminent figure in Dutch literature; he wrote a “Life of Rembrandt” which is a masterpiece of biography.  Kuenen, who died but ten years ago, was a biblical critic of European celebrity.  But the list of contemporary Dutch writers is long and brilliant, and the time to speak critically of them must be postponed.