The Yale expositor. (Yale, St. Clair County, Mich.) 1894-current, 1910-08-12

canals winch serve as hedges, for the
people have put their mastery over
the water to practical uses at every
turn. We are shaded by tall trees
that are set along either side of the
road, and we know that we are in a
land of peace, where hurry and clamor
would be unseemly. And yet in all
this benign quietude-there is moth
ing lethargic, for always with us are
the great canals with their procession
of life, quiet and slow, but resolute
and unyielding. For variety and rich
ness our English landscape Is unap-
proachable, yet in this thing a con-
trast is not embarrassing. AS we go
through our highways and lanes and
woodlands we shall find all the beau.
ty and majesty of peace, but the one
thing that we shall often miss is move
ment and life which is wholly In tune
with the surroundings and is, so to
speak, essential to the life of the ma
ton as whole. Trains may be this
last, but they destroy the calm in.
stead of emphasizing it. Motor cars
are both discordant and inessential.
Even the pleasure-boats on a river
lend a suggestion Of artificiality.
team on the ploughlands, a shepherd
folding his sheep, field of hayma-
kers or reapers, only in these do we
find the life that is in exact accord
with the scene, and these we can only
find at intervals. In Holland, on the
other hand, in places the most remote
from cities and the sound of markets
and commerce, we find always the
feeling OF seclusion and restfulness
heightened and touched to a sense of
vitality by the canals and their full
sailed barges which form an integral
part of the countrys daily life.
These canals triumphantly redeem
the physical characteristics of the
country from the charge of dulness.
Holland in it's general features is un.
deniabIy quaint, but quaintness has a
charm which is not enduring. After a
while we begin TO tire of the square
ness and orderliness, and to look up
on what appeared to be individuality
at first as eccentricity. We grow q
little uncomfortable in the land of
Lilliput, and fret for change and
some patch of wildness. But of the
canals we never weary, for in them we
see the expression of nations char
acter moulded through centuries of
stirring and honorable history. We re-
member the Dutch proverb, God
made the sea, we made the shore"
and we feel that these waterways are
not only beautiful and charged with
color and atmosphere, but symbolical
of peoples greatness.
The Dutch painters, through whom
the national genius has found its most
forcible and enduring expression,
have realized very completely this
strange blend of calm and strength.
To look at one of their portrait groups
of, say, body of hospital governors,
is to understand at once that these
men conducted their business thor.
oughly and well, but scornful OF un.
dignified haste, and for untroubled re.
pose Van der Meer's picture of Delft
in the gallery at The Hague could not
we'll be surpassed. In the great Dutch
paintings we do not find the tranquil.
ity Of the open places and luxuriant
haunts Of nature, but the deep calm Of
strong life, sober and not highly i'm.
aginative, but entirely satisfying in It's
degree.
The rise and fall OF nations is a phe-
nomenon still unaccounted for and
constantly recurring. We know that
Rome step by step rose to a splendor
the story of which is immortal, but
we cannot grasp the secret of this
splendor's decay or of the decline Of
the other great civilizations of the
world. We can but accept the fact,
and wonder at the ruined and yet no
BILE monuments of their greatness that
still stand as at once a memory and
an inspiration. When the time comes
that the peoples of western Europe
have also passed into the shadow of
dead glories, we too shall leave some
thing of our works to bear witness to
a greatness that has gone. But Hol-
land will be but a recorded history
to the new nations of far-off ages. The
sea will have prevailed, and the great
canals, which are as truly the essen
tial expression of a resolute and he
roic people as are the palaces Of
Venice or the AcropoIis of the Greeks.
will have persisted and will bear no
testimony.
JOHN DRlNKWATER.