The mechanical ingenuity of the Netherlanders, already celebrated by Julius Caesar and by Tacitus, had lost nothing of its ancient fame.  The contemporary world confessed that in many fabrics the Hollanders were at the head of mankind.  Dutch linen, manufactured of the flax grown on their own fields or imported from the obedient provinces, was esteemed a fitting present for kings to make and to receive.  The name of the country had passed into the literature of England as synonymous with the delicate fabric itself.  The Venetians confessed themselves equalled, if not outdone, by the crystal workers and sugar refiners of the northern republic.  The tapestries of Arras—­the name of which Walloon city had become a household word of luxury in all modern languages—­were now transplanted to the soil of freedom, more congenial to the advancement of art.  Brocades of the precious metals; splendid satins and velvets; serges and homely fustians; laces of thread and silk; the finer and coarser manufactures of clay and porcelain; iron, steel, and all useful fabrics for the building and outfitting of ships; substantial broadcloths manufactured of wool imported from Scotland—­all this was but a portion of the industrial production of the provinces.

They supplied the deficiency of coal, not then an article readily obtained by commerce, with other remains of antediluvian forests long since buried in the sea, and now recovered from its depths and made useful and portable by untiring industry.  Peat was not only the fuel for the fireside, but for the extensive fabrics of the country, and its advantages so much excited the admiration of the Venetian envoys that they sent home samples of it, in the hope that the lagunes of Venice might prove as prolific of this indispensable article as the polders of Holland.

But the foundation of the national wealth, the source of the apparently fabulous power by which the republic had at last overthrown her gigantic antagonist, was the ocean.  The republic was sea-born and sea-sustained.

She had nearly one hundred thousand sailors, and three thousand ships.  The sailors were the boldest, the best disciplined, and the most experienced in the-world, whether for peaceable seafaring or ocean warfare.  The ships were capable of furnishing from out of their number in time of need the most numerous and the best appointed navy then known to mankind.

The republic had the carrying trade for all nations.  Feeling its very existence dependent upon commerce, it had strode centuries in advance of the contemporary world in the liberation of trade.  But two or three per cent. ad valorem was levied upon imports; foreign goods however being subject, as well as internal products, to heavy imposts in the way of both direct and indirect taxation.

Every article of necessity or luxury known was to be purchased in profusion and at reasonable prices in the warehouses of Holland.