for their rapidly expanding greatness—exhibited every luxury that the planet on which they dwelt could produce. All that the world possessed of rich and rare, of gorgeous and beautiful, to tempt the appetite and delight the eye, to gratify the senses and feast the imagination, was theirs. All the inventions of science, all the resources of art contributed to their enjoyment. The most industrious and ingenious people the world had ever seen, was toiling jfrom morning to night and from night to morning to procure them new pleasures, to produce for them new discoveries in the arts of luxury. And all this rested on a foundation of military and naval force, so great that without much of a metaphor it may be said, their armies covered the earth, their navies swept the ocean.[1]
- ↑ The power of Great Britain is very well expressed in the following passage of Mr. Cobden's work, entitled "1793 and 1863," p. 64:—"The French have a lively recollection of the terrible disasters they suffered from the implacable enmity of oar government during the last war. They found themselves assailed by a feudal aristocracy, having at its command the wealth of a manufacturing and mercantile people, thus
authority for this story, which I saw in. a paper in The Quarterly Review, written, I believe, by J. G. Lockhart, the Editor of that Review, who was deeply read in historical antiquities.
