ON A CEETAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 65 



as his destined destroyer by infallible oracles, and felt to 

 be such by every conscious fibre of his soul 1 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 vrouws from whom Holbein painted 

 the ail-but loveliest of Madonnas, Rembrandt the grace- 

 ful girl who sits immortal on his knee in Dresden, and 

 Rubens his abounding goddesses, were the synonymes 

 of clumsy vulgarity. Even so late as Irving the ships 

 of the greatest navigators in the world were represented 

 as sailing equally well stern-foremost. That the aristo- 

 cratic 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 re- 

 publican 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 1 



