Holland and Zealand were cut in twain by the occupation of Schouwen and
the approaching fall of its capital. Germany, England, France; all
refused to stretch out their hands to save the heroic but exhaustless
little provinces. It was at this moment that a desperate but sublime
resolution took possession of the Prince's mind. There seemed but one
way left to exclude the Spaniards for ever from Holland and Zealand, and
to rescue the inhabitants from impending ruin. The Prince had long
brooded over the scheme, and the hour seemed to have struck for its
fulfilment. His project was to collect all the vessels, of every
description, which could be obtained throughout the Netherlands. The
whole population of the two provinces, men, women, and children, together
with all the moveable property of the country, were then to be embarked
on board this numerous fleet, and to seek a new home beyond the seas.
The windmills were then to be burned, the dykes pierced, the sluices
opened in every direction, and the country restored for ever to the
ocean, from which it had sprung.

It is difficult to say whether the resolution, if Providence had
permitted its fulfilment, would have been, on the whole, better or worse
for humanity and civilization. The ships which would have borne the
heroic Prince and his fortunes might have taken the direction of the
newly-discovered Western hemisphere. A religious colony, planted by a
commercial and liberty-loving race, in a virgin soil, and directed by
patrician but self-denying hands, might have preceded, by half a century,
the colony which a kindred race, impelled by similar motives, and under
somewhat similar circumstances and conditions, was destined to plant upon
the stern shores of New England. Had they directed their course to the
warm and fragrant islands of the East, an independent Christian
commonwealth might have arisen among those prolific regions, superior in
importance to any subsequent colony of Holland, cramped from its birth by