of linen and woollen goods, manufactured by herself, and of spices imported from her East India possessions, upon every commercial city in the world. The sea-fowl that drifted across her bright, sparkling meadows daily from the ocean, which she held at arm’s-length,—although rolling its white surf higher than the chimneys of her houses,—could take a bird’s-eye view of a population the thriftiest, of cities the most prosperous, of homes the most comfortable, in Europe. While Dutch enterprise thus built up a happy state at home, and sent thriving colonies abroad, her scholars were advancing the republic of letters, and giving international law to the world. Grotius at this time defined the rights and duties of war, and helped to bridle its atrocities by bits hammered from the sickles and reaping-hooks of peace. No wonder, then, that the thick-set burghers of Utrecht, Haarlaem, Leyden, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam, although transferred to a newer Amsterdam, clung with pride to their native land, damp though it was in every pore; and that the square _vrouw_ gratefully preserved her family recollections along with her thickly quilted petticoats, her oleycooks, krulers, and her own dark, well-aired complexion. The government of the settlement was, although commercial in its aims and purposes, very maternal, whether under the East India Company, which lasted until 1623, or under the West India Company, which then succeeded it with larger powers and authority. Under the last company Peter Minuit was sent out as the first governor, in 1625. The same year some enterprising Hollanders courageously passed the East River, and bravely encountered the perils of a residence in Brooklyn, from whose Heights so many now look down upon the parent city of New York,—an unhappy type of our civilization in private life. As yet all was serene in the infant colony of New Amsterdam, as if the lunar influence of the Half-Moon still shone upon its peaceful trade and growing profits. Invitations were sent to the people of Massachusetts Bay and their children in the valley of the Connecticut to come and take tea; and they in turn courteously asked the Amsterdamers to eat clam-chowder and pumpkin-pie, adding, however, at the bottom of the note, that they hoped, for reasons which they gave, that their guests would not bring with them any beaver-skins to swap with the Indians around Narragansett Bay.