From the amusements of a people may be gathered much that is necessary
for a proper estimation of its character. No unfavorable opinion can be
formed as to the culture of a nation, whose weavers, smiths, gardeners,
and traders, found the favorite amusement of their holidays in composing
and enacting tragedies or farces, reciting their own verses, or in
personifying moral and esthetic sentiments by ingeniously-arranged
groups, or gorgeous habiliments. The cramoisy velvets and yellow satin
doublets of the court, the gold-brocaded mantles of priests and princes
are often but vulgar drapery of little historic worth. Such costumes
thrown around the swart figures of hard-working artisans, for literary
and artistic purposes, have a real significance, and are worthy of a
closer examination. Were not these amusements of the Netherlanders as
elevated and humanizing as the contemporary bull-fights and autos-da-fe
of Spain? What place in history does the gloomy bigot merit who, for the
love of Christ, converted all these gay cities into shambles, and changed
the glittering processions of their Land jewels into fettered marches to
the scaffold?

Thus fifteen ages have passed away, and in the place of a horde of
savages, living among swamps and thickets, swarm three millions of
people, the most industrious, the most prosperous, perhaps the most
intelligent under the sun. Their cattle, grazing on the bottom of the
sea, are the finest in Europe, their agricultural products of more
exchangeable value than if nature had made their land to overflow with
wine and oil. Their navigators are the boldest, their mercantile marine
the most powerful, their merchants the most enterprising in the world.
Holland and Flanders, peopled by one race, vie with each other in the
pursuits of civilization. The Flemish skill in the mechanical and in the
fine arts is unrivalled. Belgian musicians delight and instruct other