The Low Countries were very prosperous at this time and took up seriously the problem of helping the poor. As we have told more in detail in the chapter on "Hospitals and Care for the Insane," the order of Beguines took up the nursing and the visiting of the poor, and in many places the Beguinages assumed the character to some extent of institutions for the care of the poor. The word poorhouses has becomes so unfortunate in its connotations that one would scarcely think of using it in connection with these almost separate village-like communities, with abundance of air and light, in which the young women of the better classes took up their own life in small, neat, attractive houses and cared for the aged poor and children in little houses not far from their own. A great number of dependents were maintained mainly out of the revenues derived from the incomes which these young women of the better classes brought with them into the institution and from the funds contributed by friends who were interested in their good work. Our modern settlements are like them in certain {179} ways, but there are so many differences in favor of the older institutions, which represent indeed an almost ideal way of exercising charity, that the contrast is striking. Many of the religious orders that were doing such good work in Columbus' time have gone through many vicissitudes. Governments have often turned to enrich their favorites at the expense of charitable foundations in their hands, and it has been an easy way for politicians to get money. In spite of all this, some of them continue to do their work even at the present time. Among these the Beguines are particularly worthy of note. After the union of Holland and Belgium, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, William of Holland attempted to abrogate many of the rights of the Beguines and confiscate much of their property. The municipality of Ghent, in which the largest Beguinage was situated, sent a protest, in which they catalogued the great services of the order in times of war and epidemics, and the unfriendly purpose of the Holland Government was changed. In the nineteenth century the list of good works accomplished by the Beguines is very striking and some of them have been listed by Miss Nutting and Miss Dock in their "History of Nursing":