Such exhibitions were but the excrescences of a system which had borne good fruit.

These literary guilds befitted and denoted a people which was alive, a people which had neither sunk to sleep in the lap of material prosperity, nor abased itself in the sty of ignorance and political servitude.

The spirit of liberty pervaded these rude but not illiterate assemblies, and her fair proportions were distinctly visible, even through the somewhat grotesque garb which she thus assumed.
The great leading recreations which these chambers afforded to themselves and the public, were the periodic jubilees which they celebrated in various capital cities.

All the guilds of rhetoric throughout the Netherlands were then invited to partake and to compete in magnificent processions, brilliant costumes, living pictures, charades, and other animated, glittering groups, and in trials of dramatic and poetic skill, all arranged under the superintendence of the particular association which, in the preceding year, had borne away the prize.

Such jubilees were called "Land jewels." From the amusements of a people may be gathered much that is necessary for a proper estimation of its character.