Note 12 — ANNO DOMINI 2071. (continued 2)

So little do we know of a country so worth knowing, that we daily commit ourselves by speaking of it as Holland. The kingdom of the Netherlands, as now constituted, is divided into ten counties or provinces, and two of these are respectively called North and South Holland. The former is the territory here alluded to; it includes neither Leiden, nor the Hague, nor Rotterdam. To speak of the Netherlands as Holland, corresponds to calling England Devonshire or Cheshire, and this particular terminology is the more amusing to the natives because with them it is a shibboleth of vulgarity. There never was a kingdom of Holland, except from 1806–1810, under Napoleonic rule, when the Dutch had lost their independence through that most dangerous scourge of nations, internal division.

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