50 ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 



that our destructive agency was so insidious, working invisible 

 in the elements, as it seemed, active while they slept, and 

 co ning upon them in the darkness like an armed man. Could 

 Laius have the proper feelings of a father towards CEdipus 

 announced as his destined destroyer by infallible oracles, and 

 felt to be such by every conscious fibre of his soul ? For 

 more than a century the Dutch were the laughing-stock of 

 polite Europe. They were butter-firkins, swillers of beer and 

 schnaps, and their vrouius from whom Holbein painted the 

 ail-but loveliest of Madonnas, Rembrandt the graceful girl 

 who sits immortal on his knee in Dresden, and Rubens his 

 abounding goddesses, were the synonymes of clumsy vul 

 garity. Even so late as Irving the ships of the greatest 

 navigators in the world were represented as sailing equally 

 well stern-foremost. That the aristocratic Venetians should 

 have 



Riveted with gigantic piles 

 Thorough the centre their new-catched miles, 



was heroic. But the far more marvellous achievement of 

 the Dutch in the same kind was ludicrous even to republican 

 Marvell. Meanwhile, during that very century of scorn, they 

 were the best artists, sailors, merchants, bankers, printers, 

 scholars, jurisconsults, and statesmen in Europe, and the 

 genius of Motley has revealed them to us, earning a right to 

 themselves by the most heroic struggle in human annals. 

 But, alas ! they were not merely simple burghers who had 

 fairly made themselves high mightinesses, and could treat 

 on equal terms with anointed kings, but their commonwealth 

 carried in its bosom the germs of democracy. They even 

 unmuzzled, at least after dark, that dreadful mastiff, the 

 Press, whose scent is, or ought to be, so keen for wolves in 

 sheep s clothing and for certain other animals in lions skins. 

 They made fun of sacred majesty, and, what was worse, 

 managed uncommonly well without it. In an age when 

 periwigs made so large a part of the natural dignity of man, 

 people with such a turn of mind were dangerous. How could 

 they seem other than vulgar and hateful ? 



In the natural course of things we succeeded to this unen 

 viable position of general butt. The Dutch had thriven under 

 it pretty well, and there was hope that we could at least con 

 trive to worry along. And we certainly did in a very re 

 doubtable fashion. Perhaps we deserved some of the sar- 



