Even iron yields to the more ductile metal.

The importance of municipalities, enriched by trade, begins to be felt.

Commerce, the mother of Netherland freedom, and, eventually, its destroyer--even as in all human history the vivifying becomes afterwards the dissolving principle--commerce changes insensibly and miraculously the aspect of society.

Clusters of hovels become towered cities; the green and gilded Hanse of commercial republicanism coils itself around the decaying trunk of feudal despotism.

Cities leagued with cities throughout and beyond Christendom-empire within empire-bind themselves closer and closer in the electric chain of human sympathy and grow stronger and stronger by mutual support.