The man of trade was so low, that it took him long to rise. A London merchant, the famous Gresham, in the time of Elizabeth, founded the Royal Exchange, and a college also; but trade continued still a butt for jest and gibe. At a later day an English statute gave new security to the merchant's accounts; but the contemporaneous dramatists exhibited him to the derision of the theatre, and even the almanacs exposed his ignorant superstitions by chronicling the days supposed to be favorable or unfavorable to trade. But in the grand mutations of society the merchant throve. His wealth increased, his influence extended, and he gradually drew into his company decayed or poverty-stricken members of feudal families, till at last in France (I do not forget the exceptional condition of Italy), at the close of the seventeenth century, an edict was put forth, which John Locke has preserved in the journal of his travels, "that those who merchandise, but do not use the yard, shall not lose their gentility"[141] (admirable discrimination!); and in England, at the close of the eighteenth century, his former degradation and growing importance were attested in the saying of Dr. Johnson, that "an English merchant is a new species of gentleman."[142] But this high arbiter, bending under feudal traditions, would not even then concede to him any merit,--proclaiming that there were "no qualities in trade that should entitle a man to superiority,"--that "we cannot think that a fellow, by sitting all day at a desk, is entitled to get above us,"--and to the supposition by his faithful Boswell, that a merchant might be a man of enlarged mind, the determined moralist replied: "Why, Sir, we may suppose any fictitious character; but there is nothing in trade connected with an enlarged mind."[143] [141] King's Life of Locke, Vol. I. p. 104. [142] Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. Croker, (London, 1835,) Vol. II. p. 294, note, anno 1765. [143] Boswell's Johnson, Vol. V. pp. 63, 64, Oct. 18, 1773.