“ Human enterprise has reclaimed and guards it, and has converted the whole into one of the most productive regions in Europe. Not only has it turned an expanse of foggy, unwholesome fens into a vast model farm, but it has built prosperous cities, and filled them with the products of art and civilization. The Dutch race has stretched its hands everywhere, and the earth is full of evidences of its courage and foresight. ”

“ No nationality in the world has earned its liberty more worthily than the Dutch, or has more right to something of self-glorification on the score of it. The land on which it dwells is, if not its own creation, its salvage. ”

“ It defied the frowns of nature, it compelled the Old World and the New to pay it tribute, it made itself learned and accomplished, because it felt that it was performing the work for and by itself. In the history of its rise and its fortunes the maintenance of its independence, with the briefest intervals, is a continual marvel. ”