It is impossible also to remain long in the great Hals' room of the Museum without meditating a little upon the difference between these arquebusiers and the Dutch of the present day.

Passing among these people, once so mighty and ambitious, so great in government and colonisation, in seamanship and painting, and seeing them now so material and self-centred, so bound within their own small limits, so careless of literature and art, so intent upon the profits of the day and the pleasures of next Sunday, one has a vision of what perhaps may be our own lot.

For the Dutch are very near us in kin, and once were nigh as great as we have been.

Are we, in our day of decadence, to shrivel thus?
"There but for the grace of God goes England"-- is that a reasonable utterance?
One sees the difference concretely as one passes from these many Corporation and Regent pieces in the galleries of Holland to the living Dutchmen of the streets.

I saw it particularly at Haarlem on a streaming wet day, after hurrying from the Museum to the Cafe Brinkmann through some inches of water.