Of these two elements, dissimilar in their tendencies and always difficult to blend, the Netherland people has ever been compounded.

A certain fatality of history has perpetually helped to separate still more widely these constituents, instead of detecting and stimulating the elective affinities which existed.

Religion, too, upon all great historical occasions, has acted as the most powerful of dissolvents.

Otherwise, had so many valuable and contrasted characteristics been early fused into a whole, it would be difficult to show a race more richly endowed by Nature for dominion and progress than the Belgo-Germanic people.
Physically the two races resembled each other.

Both were of vast stature.
The gigantic Gaul derided the Roman soldiers as a band of pigmies.