It was not to be wondered at that the Queen thus situated should be
cautious, when about throwing down the gauntlet to the greatest powers of
the earth. Yet the commissioners from the United States were now on
their way to England to propose the throwing of that gauntlet. What now
was that England?

Its population was, perhaps, not greater than the numbers which dwell
to-day within its capital and immediate suburbs. Its revenue was perhaps
equal to the sixtieth part of the annual interest on the present national
debt. Single, highly-favoured individuals, not only in England but in
other countries cis- and trans-Atlantic, enjoy incomes equal to more than
half the amount of Elizabeth's annual budget. London, then containing
perhaps one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, was hardly so
imposing a town as Antwerp, and was inferior in most material respects to
Paris and Lisbon. Forty-two hundred children were born every year within
its precincts, and the deaths were nearly as many. In plague years,
which were only too frequent, as many as twenty and even thirty thousand
people had been annually swept away.

At the present epoch there are seventeen hundred births every week, and
about one thousand deaths.

It is instructive to throw a glance at the character of the English
people as it appeared to intelligent foreigners at that day; for the
various parts of the world were not then so closely blended, nor did
national colours and characteristics flow so liquidly into each other,
as is the case in these days of intimate juxta-position.

"The English are a very clever, handsome, and well-made people," says a
learned Antwerp historian and merchant, who had resided a long time in