they consumed of the produce of distant parts of the world through the medium of England.[1] Thus England, he proceeds, had fallen into the traffic with India, Arabia, and Persia, which was formerly enjoyed by Venice, and now furnished that very city plenteously with the rich commodities of these eastern countries. London also supplied the place of Venice to the rest of Italy. To France England still brought the excellent commodities of Constantinople, Alexandria, Aleppo, and the rest of the Turkish dominions, the French having almost lost their own trade with those parts. Nay, to the Turks themselves England now conveyed the precious spices of India, after their own merchants had ceased to carry on that trade. "Will you," continues our author, "view Muscovia, survey Sweden, look upon Denmark, peruse the East Country and those other colder regions; there shall you find the English to have been; the inhabitants, from the prince to the peasant, wear English woollen livery, feed in English pewter, sauce with English Indian spices, and send to their enemies sad English leaden messengers of death. Will you behold the Netherlands, whose eyes and hearts envy England's traffic, yet they must perforce confess, that, for all their great boasts, they are indebted to London for most of their Syria commodities, besides what of other wares else they have of English growth. Will you see France, and travel it from Marselia to Calais, though they stand least in need of us, yet they cannot last long without our commodities. And for Spain, if you pry therein from the prince's palace to the poor man's cottage, he will voto a Dios [vow to God] there is no clothing comparable to the English bay, nor pheasant excelling a seasonable English red herringI" So ambitious a burst of rhetoric might have had a more imposing close; but the red herring serves not ill to introduce the more calm and prosaic statement of particu-
- ↑ The original is a little obscure here, apparently through some typographical error; but, from what follows, the sense of the passage appears to be as we have given it.
