Their navigators are the boldest, their mercantile marine the most powerful, their merchants the most enterprising in the world.
Holland and Flanders, peopled by one race, vie with each other in the pursuits of civilization.

The Flemish skill in the mechanical and in the fine arts is unrivalled.

Belgian musicians delight and instruct other nations, Belgian pencils have, for a century, caused the canvas to glow with colors and combinations never seen before.

Flemish fabrics are exported to all parts of Europe, to the East and West Indies, to Africa.
The splendid tapestries, silks, linens, as well as the more homely and useful manufactures of the Netherlands, are prized throughout the world.
Most ingenious, as they had already been described by the keen-eyed Caesar, in imitating the arts of other nations, the skillful artificers of the country at Louvain, Ghent, and other places, reproduce the shawls and silks of India with admirable accuracy.
Their national industry was untiring; their prosperity unexampled; their love of liberty indomitable; their pugnacity proverbial.

Peaceful in their pursuits, phlegmatic by temperament, the Netherlands were yet the most belligerent and excitable population of Europe.