for the empire of the seas, and who next to England possess the finest and most flourishing colonies, and have in recent years, in war and in peace, obstinately pushed themselves forward and made England recoil before her in South Africa.
Historically the fall of Belgium was the rise of Holland. In the 12th, 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries when Bruges and Ghent were fighting the battle of popular freedom, Holland was scarcely known to history. The Counts of Holland who had their hunting grounds at the Hague (Hedge or Enclosure) united the fishing town of Amsterdam with it in the 14th century. Holland passed with Belgium under the house of Burgundy and then under Austria, and in the 16th century both the kingdoms groaned under Spanish bigotry and oppression. Here the glorious period of Belgian history ends and that of Holland begins. Belgium remained a Roman Catholic country, but Holland had embraced the new Protestant faith and was therefore principally an object of wrath to its Spanish rulers. The glorious battle of independence which Holland waged at the close of the 16th century under William the Silent has been worthily told by Motley in his Dutch Republic. Belgium remained under the Spanish yoke, and became the possession of the great powers by turns,—of Spain, Austria and France as has been stated before. Holland on the contrary threw off the Spanish yoke after a most heroic war, and her independence was recognized by Spain in 1609. Trade followed in the wake of independence, commercial prosperity which had left Bruges for Antwerp now travel-
