Dutch Life in Town and Country

Holland holds the second place among the successful colonizing nations, though Powers like England, France, and Germany surpass her in the actual area of their colonies and prot...

Of all the festivals and occasions of popular rejoicing and merriment in Holland none can compare with the Kermis and the Festival of St. Nicholas, which are in many ways peculi...

Although the Dutch maintained their independence in the sixteenth century against the most formidable regular army in Europe, and also did their fair share of fighting in the se...

To describe an 'average' Dutch peasant would be to say very little of him. There is far too much difference in this class of people all over the Netherlands to allow of any gene...

The professional classes of Holland show their characteristics best in the social circle in which they move and find their most congenial companionships. Imagine, then, that we...

The Hollander is a very conservative individual, and therefore some curious customs still prevail among the peasant and working classes in the Netherlands, especially in the Eas...

There are two very marked differences between the administration of justice in Holland and in England. The first is that what are called 'petty offences' are not tried and dispo...

The art of a country is ever in unity with the character of the people. It reflects their ideas and sentiments; their history is marked in its progress or decline; and it shows...

Holland is a democratic kingdom. Democracy was born there in the sixteenth century, and is still unquestionably thriving. But democracy was born in peculiar circumstances; it wa...

Holland, like other countries, is indebted to primitive and classic times for most of its national amusements and children's games, which have been handed down from generation t...

When Drusus a few years before the commencement of our era excavated the Yssel canal, and thus gave a new arm to the Rhine, he began a process of canalization in the Frisian and...

The Dutch woman, generally speaking, is not the 'new woman' in the sense of taking any very definite part in the politics of the country. Neither does she interest herself, or i...

If the Dutch peasant is not generally well educated it is not for want of opportunity, but rather because he has not taken what is offered him. For many years past a good elemen...

As to the Universities themselves, it is not necessary to consider them separately, as all four of them, Leyden, Groningen, Utrecht and Amsterdam, are alike in constitution. The...

Although printing was not invented in Holland, the nation would not have been unworthy of that honour, for there is a widespread culture of the book among all classes of the pop...

The condition of the Dutch urban working classes is by no means an enviable one. Granting that wages are much higher than half a century ago, when bread cost fivepence-halfpenny...

The Dutch are a thoroughly religious people. Religious sentiments and introspective inclinations were bound to develop and prosper in the Low Lands, where vast plains of fertile...

There is in human affairs a reason for everything we see, although not always reason in everything. It is the part of the historian to seek in the archives of a nation the reaso...

Society life in Holland is, as everywhere else, the gentle art of escaping self-confession of boredom. But society in Holland is far different from society abroad, because The H...

Singing was one of the principal social pastimes of the Dutch nation during the eighteenth and far into the nineteenth century, and the North Hollander was especially fond of vo...

Villages in Holland are towns in miniature, for the simple reason that when you have a marsh to live in you drain a part of it and build on that part, and so build in streets, a...