Gresham determined to present to his fellow citizens such a Bourse as the merchants of Antwerp had enjoyed for centuries. He built his Bourse; he gave it to the City: he gave it as a place of meeting for the merchants: he gave it for the advance of enterprise. The Queen opened it with great State, and called it the Royal Exchange. It stood exactly where the present Royal Exchange stands, but its entrance was on the south side, not the west. And no gift has ever been made to any city more noble, more farseeing, more wise, or productive of greater benefits. 45. TRADE. PART III. The merchants got their Exchange. What did they do in it? They did most wonderful things with it. Greater things were never done in any Exchange. For the first time they were enabled to act together: and it was the most favourable opportunity that ever happened to any trading community. The charters of the foreigners were abolished: the markets of Bruges were depressed in consequence of the civil wars already beginning: that city itself, with Antwerp and Ghent, was on the point of ruin. The way was open, and the spirit of enterprise was awakened. In ordinary times it would have been the love of gain alone that awakened this spirit. But these were not ordinary times. The people of Western Europe took a hundred years to discover that Columbus had doubled the world: that there was a new continent across the ocean. They began to send their ships across: nobody as yet knew the possibilities of that continent with its islands: the Spaniards had the first run, but the French and the English were beginning to claim their share. Then a way to India and the East had been found out: we were no longer going to be dependent on the Venetians for the products of Persia, India, the Moluccas, China. All those turbulent and restless spirits who could not settle down to peaceful crafts or the dull life of the desk, longed to be on board ship sailing Westward Ho. Fortune was waiting for them there: fortune with fighting, privation, endurance--perhaps death by fever or by battle: yet a glorious life. Or they might sail southwards and so round the Cape of Good Hope--called at first the Cape of Storms--and across the Indian Ocean to the port of Calicut, there to trade. There were dangers enough even on that voyage to tempt the most adventurous: Moorish pirates off the coast of Morocco: European pirates--English pirates--coming out of the rivers and ports of Western Africa: storms off the Cape: hurricanes in the Indian Ocean: the rocks and reefs of seas as yet unsurveyed: treachery of natives. Yet there were never wanting men in plenty to volunteer for these long and perilous voyages. At home, then, the spirit of enterprise, joined with the spirit of adventure, achieved mighty things. The merchant adventurers succeeding to some of the trade of the Hanseatic League, established 'courts,' i.e. branches at Antwerp, Hamburg, and Dordrecht: they had also courts at York, Hull, and Newcastle.