[Sidenote: Religious feeling of the nation changed.] Henry VIII. cannot, therefore, be properly considered as the author of the downfall of ecclesiasticism in England, though he was the instrument by which it was ostensibly accomplished. The derisive insinuation that the Gospel light had flashed upon him from Anna Boleyn's eyes was far from expressing all the truth. The nullity of papal disciplines, excommunications, interdicts, penances, proved that the old tone of thought was utterly decayed. This oblivion of old emotions, this obsoleteness of old things, was by no means confined to England. On the Continent the attacks of Erasmus on the monks were everywhere received with applause. In 1527 one printer issued an edition of 24,000 copies of the Colloquies of Erasmus, and actually sold them all. He understood the signs of the times. [Sidenote: State of England at the close of the seventeenth century.] From this digression on parties and policy in England, let us again return to special details, descending for that purpose to the close of the seventeenth century. For a long time London had been the most populous capital in Europe; yet it was dirty, ill built, without sanitary provisions. The deaths were one in twenty-three each year; now, in a much more crowded population, they are not one in forty. Much of the country was still heath, swamp, warren. [Sidenote: Wild state of the country.] Almost within sight of the city was a tract twenty-five miles round nearly in a state of nature; there were but three houses in it. Wild animals roamed here and there. It is incidentally mentioned that Queen Anne, on a journey to Portsmouth, saw a herd of five hundred red deer. With such small animals as the marten and badger, found everywhere, there was still seen occasionally the wild bull.