But however wonderful may be the physical history of Holland, her political history is still more so.  This small territory invaded from the beginning by different tribes of the Germanic races, subjugated by the Romans and the Franks, devastated by the Normans and by the Danes, desolated by centuries of civil war with all its horrors, this small people of fisherman and traders, saves its civil liberty and its freedom of conscience by a war of eighty years against the formidable monarchy of Philip II., and founds a republic which becomes the ark of salvation to the liberties of all the world, the adopted country of science, the Exchange of Europe, the station for the commerce of the world; a republic which extends its domination to Java, Sumatra, Hindustan, Ceylon, New Holland, Japan, Brazil, Guiana, the Cape of Good Hope, the West-Indies, and New York; a republic which vanquished England on the sea, which resists the united arms of Charles II. and Louis XIV., and which treats on equal terms with the greatest nations, and is, for a time, one of the three Powers that decide the fate of Europe.

ROTTERDAM AND THE HAGUE[A]

[Footnote A:  From “Holland and Its People.”  By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, S.P.  Putnam’s Sons.  Copyright, 1880.]

BY EDMONDO DE AMICIS

It is a singular thing that the great cities of Holland, altho built upon a shifting soil, and amid difficulties of every kind, have all great regularity of form.  Amsterdam is a semicircle, the Hague square, Rotterdam an equilateral triangle.  The base of the triangle is an immense dike, which defends the city from the Meuse, and is called the Boompjes, signifying, in Dutch, small trees, from a row of little elms, now very tall, that were planted when it was first constructed.

The whole city of Rotterdam presents the appearance of a town that has been shaken smartly by an earthquake, and is on the point of the falling ruin.  All the houses—­in any street one may count the exceptions on their fingers—­lean more or less, but the greater part of them so much that at the roof they lean forward at least a foot beyond their neighbors, which may be straight, or not so visibly inclined; one leans forward as if it would fall into the street; another backward, another to the left, another to the right, at some points six or seven contiguous houses all lean forward together, those in the middle most, those at the ends lass, looking like a paling with a crowd pressing against it.  At another point, two houses lean together as if supporting one another.  In certain streets the houses for a long distance lean all one way, like trees beaten by a prevailing wind; and then another long row will lean in the opposite direction, as if the wind had changed.