were, was ever exerted for the benefit of those who obeyed. It was the
earnest and undaunted spirit of their women, which encouraged the Dutch
to dare, and their calm fortitude to endure, the toils, privations, and
sufferings of the first years of the war of independence against Spain;
it was their activity and thrift in the management of their private
incomes, that supplied them with the means of defraying an amount
of national expenditure wholly unexampled in history; and to their
influence is to be ascribed above all, the decorum of manners, and the
purity of morals, for which the society of Holland has at all times
been remarkable. But though they preserved their virtue and modesty
uncontaminated amid the general corruption, they were no longer able
to maintain their sway. The habit which the Dutch youth had acquired,
among other foreign customs, of seeking amusement abroad, rendered
them less dependent for happiness on the comforts of a married life;
while, accustomed to the more dazzling allurements of the women of
France and Italy, they were apt to overlook or despise the quiet and
unobtrusive beauties of those of their own country. Whether they did
not better consult their own dignity in emancipating themselves from
this subjection may be a question; but the fact, that the decline of
the republic and of the female sex went hand in hand, is indubitable."

To return to Amsterdam's sights, the church which I remember with most
pleasure is the English Reformed Church, which many visitors never
succeed in finding at all, but to which I was taken by a Dutch lady who
knew my tastes. You seek the Spui, where the electric trams start for
Haarlem, and enter a very small doorway on the north side. It seems
to lead to a private house, but instead you find yourself in a very
beautiful little enclosure of old and quaint buildings, exquisitely
kept, each with a screen of pollarded chestnuts before it; in the midst
of which is a toy white church with a gay little spire that might have