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HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

only to enervate, but to destroy them. Actuated by these considerations, hencidier encouraged speculative projects, nor suffered the honest industry of his.subjects to dw indle under a cold neglect. Their intercourse with die most distantquarters of the world was carried on without opposition, or even murmur, fromother countries, because no intention was betrayed of rendering those pursuits, which,in their first intent, were proper and beneficial, injurious, to the rest of the world,by an undue or inequitable extension. Under a prince possessing such moderate,and certainly such enviable qualities, the historian can little expect to meet with anyof those exalted proofs of improvement in a science, whose arts were considered;byhim as practised to the utmost extent which he deemed necessary, when he assumedthe direction and guidance of his people. Built in conformity with the fashion ofdieir neighbours, die inhabitants of the United Provinces, their inferior vessels ofcommerce might almost universally have been confounded, by even a curious.ob-server, with each other while those few which they possessed of die superior classwere as little distinguishable from those of the Hollanders as the former., Thusdid the marine of Europe become as it were divided into two classes, and the dis-tinctions have been invariably preserved down to die present dme.

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