It was a good-sized house, with a nice garden, in the then outskirts of London--a much more limited London than the great metropolis of the present day, though even then Englishmen were wont to describe it as "vast." Where Colonel Baron's house stood, with fields and hedges near at hand, miles of streets now extend in all directions. Trafalgar Square and Regent Street were unbuilt; Pimlico and Moorfields alike consisted mainly of bare rough ground; and the City was still a fashionable place of residence. These facts serve to show how small a London existed in those days. Roy Baron was a handsome well-set-up lad of about twelve, and he had on a blue cloth jacket, with trousers and waistcoat of the same material. Knickerbockers were unknown. Children and bigger boys wore loose trousers, while tights and uncovered stockings were reserved for grown-up gentlemen. In a few weeks Roy would exchange his cloth waistcoat and trousers for linen ditto, either white or striped. Boys' hair was not cropped so closely in the year 1803 as in the Nineties, and a mass of close little curls grew all over Roy's head. The year 1803. Think what that means. Napoleon Buonaparte was alive--not only alive, but in full vigour; and he had entered on his career of conquest, and the world was in terror of his name. Nelson was alive, and five years earlier he had won the great battle of the Nile; two years earlier the great battle of Copenhagen; though his crowning victory of Trafalgar had not yet finally established British supremacy over the ocean. Wellington was alive, but his then name of Sir Arthur Wellesley had not yet become widely famous, and no one could guess that one day he would be the Iron Duke of world-wide celebrity. Sir John Moore, the future Hero of Coruña, was alive, and, though not yet knighted, was already "the most renowned military character of his age."[A] Napoleon was not yet Emperor of the French. He was only climbing towards that goal, and thus far he had not advanced beyond being First Consul in the Republic. By English people generally he was viewed with a mingling of detestation and disgust, dread and disdain, varied in some quarters by a certain amount of admiration. The peace between England and France, lasting somewhat over twelve months, had been hardly more than an armed and uncertain truce, a mere slight break in long years of intermittent warfare. As the old king, George III., remarked at the time, it was "an experimental peace," and few had hopes of its long continuance. For the Firebrand was still in Europe, and barrels of gunpowder lay on all sides. Both before the peace began, and also while it continued, Napoleon indulged in many speculative threats of a future invasion of England, and preparations were at this date said to be actually begun.