Talk, if you keep it, pays its keep, But gabble’s the short road to ruin. ’Tis gratis (gals half price), but cheap At no price when it hinders doing,-- ought to be put into Dutch as the national motto. Then as to thoroughness. Take the most notable example of it first. We have been driving all round for some days, and have only once come to a slope up which our horse had to walk. When we got to the top, there was the sea on the other side, obviously even to the untrained eye at a considerably higher level than the green fields through which we had just been driving. Of course it is an old story, the Dutchman’s long war with the German Ocean, but one never realises it till one comes to drive uphill to the sea, and then it fairly takes one’s breath away. I was deeply impressed, and took advantage of a chance that offered of talking the subject over with an expert, who, like most Dutchmen, happily speaks English fluently. Far from expressing any anxiety as to the land already won, he informed me that they are seriously contemplating operations against the Zuider Zee, and driving him permanently out of Holland! And I declare I believe they will do it, and so win the right, alone, so far as I know, amongst the nations, of saying to the sea: “Hitherto shalt thou come and no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed.” One more example,--their thoroughness as to cleanliness. Not only the pavements of the main thoroughfares, but all the side-streets are thoroughly well washed and cleansed daily. When you walk out in the early morning you might eat your breakfast anywhere with perfect comfort on the sidewalks. We had to look for more than a quarter of an hour to find a bit of paper in the streets, and the windows in the back streets, even of houses to let, are rubbed bright and polished to a point which must be the despair of the passing English housewife. Why are Dutch house-maidens so incomparably more diligent and clean than English? Can it be their Puritan bringing-up? In short, ten days’ residence here--I have never before done anything but rush through the country on my way east--seems likely to make me review old prejudices, and to exclaim, “If I were not an Englishman, I would be a Dutchman!” One may read and enjoy Motley without really appreciating this silent and “thorough” people, or understanding how it came to pass that by them, in this tiny and precarious corner of Europe, “the great deliverance was wrought out.” “Poor Paddy-Land!”--I--6th Oct. 1894.