LETTERS, SCIENCE AND ART The epithet "glorious"-- _roemrijke_--has been frequently applied by Dutch historians to the period of Frederick Henry--and deservedly.

The preceding chapter has told that it was a time of wonderful maritime and colonial expansion, of commercial supremacy and material prosperity.

But the spirit of the Holland, which reached its culminating point of national greatness in the middle of the 17th century, was far from being wholly occupied with voyages of adventure and conquest on far distant seas, or engrossed in sordid commercialism at home.

The rapid acquisition of wealth by successful trade is dangerous to the moral health and stability alike of individuals and of societies; and the vices which follow in its train had, as we have already pointed out, infected to a certain extent the official and commercial classes in the Dutch republic at this epoch.

There is, however, another side of the picture.