of a trading corporation. But alas! the world was to wait for centuries
until it should learn that the State can best defend religion by letting
it alone, and that the political arm is apt to wither with palsy when it
attempts to control the human conscience.

It is not entirely the commonwealth of the United Netherlands that is of
importance in the epoch which I have endeavoured to illustrate. History
can have neither value nor charm for those who are not impressed with a
conviction of its continuity.

More than ever during the period which we call modern history has this
idea of the continuousness of our race, and especially of the inhabitants
of Europe and America, become almost oppressive to the imagination.
There is a sense of immortality even upon earth when we see the
succession of heritages in the domains of science, of intellectual and
material wealth by which mankind, generation after generation, is
enriching itself.

If this progress be a dream, if mankind be describing a limited circle
instead of advancing towards the infinite; then no study can be more
contemptible than the study of history.

Few strides more gigantic have been taken in the march of humanity than
those by which a parcel of outlying provinces in the north of Europe
exchanged slavery to a foreign despotism and to the Holy Inquisition
for the position of a self-governing commonwealth, in the, front rank of
contemporary powers, and in many respects the foremost of the world. It
is impossible to calculate the amount of benefit tendered to civilization
by the example of the Dutch republic. It has been a model which has been
imitated, in many respects, by great nations. It has even been valuable