"Toward the close of the fifteenth century ... commerce and the woollen trade made a sudden advance, and such an enormous one that corn-fields were changed into pasture-lands, 'whereby the inhabitants of the said town (Manchester) have gotten and come into riches and wealthy livings,' so that in 1553, 40,000 pieces of cloth were exported in English ships. It was already the England which we see to-day, a land of meadows, green, intersected by hedgerows, crowded with cattle, abounding in ships, a manufacturing, opulent land, with a people of beef-eating toilers, who enrich it while they enrich themselves. They improved agriculture to such an extent, that in half a century the produce of an acre was doubled. They grew so rich, that at the beginning of the reign of Charles I. the Commons represented three times the wealth of the Upper House. The ruin of Antwerp by the Duke of Parma sent to England 'the third part of the merchants and manufacturers, who made silk, damask, stockings, taffetas, and serges.' The defeat of the Armada and the decadence of Spain opened the seas to their merchants. The toiling hive, who would dare, attempt, explore, act in unison, and always with profit, was about to reap its advantages and set out on its voyages, buzzing over the universe. At the base and on the summit of society, in all ranks of life, in all grades of human condition, this new welfare became visible. ... It is not when all is good, but when all is better, that they see the bright side of life, and are tempted to make a holiday of it. This is why at this period they did make a holiday of it, a splendid show, so like a picture that it fostered painting in Italy, so like a representation, that it produced the drama in England. Now that the battle-axe and sword of the civil wars had beaten down the independent nobility, and the abolition of the law of maintenance had destroyed the petty royalty of each great feudal baron, the lords quitted their sombre castles, battlemented fortresses, surrounded by stagnant water, pierced with narrow windows, a sort of stone breast-plates of no use but to preserve the life of their masters. They flock into new palaces, with vaulted roofs and turrets, covered with fantastic and manifold ornaments, adorned with terraces and vast staircases, with gardens, fountains, statues, such as were the palaces of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, half Gothic and half Italian, whose convenience, grandeur, and beauty announced already habits of society and the taste for pleasure. They came to court and abandoned their old manners; the four meals which scarcely sufficed their former voracity were reduced to two; gentlemen soon became refined, placing their glory in the elegance and singularity of their amusements and their clothes. ... To vent the feelings, to