On days when storms prevail, a concession is made to the sea,
and the most advanced of the sluicegates is left open; and then the
furious billows rush into the canal, like an enemy entering by a
breach, but they break upon the formidable barrier of the second gate,
behind which Holland stands and cries, "Thus far shalt thou go, and
no farther!" That enormous fortification which, on a desert shore,
defends a dying river and a fallen city from the ocean, has something
of solemnity which commands respect and admiration....
Napoleon said that it [Holland] was an alluvion of Trench rivers--the
Rhine, the Scheldt, and the Meuse--and with this pretext he added
it to the empire. One writer has defined it as a sort of transition
between land and sea. Another, as an immense crust of earth floating
on water. Others, an annex of the old continent, the China of Europe,
the end of the earth, and the beginning of the ocean, a measureless
raft of mud and sand; and Philip II. called it the country nearest to
hell.
But they all agreed upon one point, and all exprest it in the same
words:--Holland is a conquest made by man over the sea--it is an
artificial country--the Hollanders made it--it exists because the
Hollanders preserve it--it will vanish whenever the Hollanders shall
abandon it.
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