And in thy nest the goods of each pole meets,--
Which thy foes hope, shall serve thy funeral rites--
But thou more wise, secur'd by thy deep skill,
Dost build on waves, from fires more safe than hill.


To return to the severer critics--in 1664 was published a little book
called _The Dutch Drawn to the Life_, a hostile work not improbably
written with the intention of exciting English animosity to the point
of war. A great deal was made of the success of the Dutch fisheries
and the mismanagement of our own. The nation was criticised in all
its aspects--"well nigh three millions of men, well-proportioned,
great lovers of our English beer". The following passage on the
drinking capacity of the Dutch would have to be modified to-day:--

By their Excise, which riseth with their charge, the more money
they pay, the more they receive again, in that insensible but
profitable way: what is exhaled up in clouds, falls back again
in showers: what the souldier receives in pay, he payes in
Drink: their very enemies, though they hate the State, yet love
their liquor, and pay excise: the most idle, slothful, and most
improvident, that selleth his blood for drink, and his flesh for
bread, serves at his own charge, for every pay day he payeth his
sutler, and he the common purse.

Here are other strokes assisting to the protraiture "to the life" of
this people: "Their habitations are kept handsomer than their bodies,
and their bodies than their soules".--"The Dutch man's building is
not large, but neat; handsome on the outside, on the inside hung
with pictures and tapestry. He that hath not bread to eat hath a