y and
detraction to which he was subject, and which must have amounted to
a storm of abuse and perhaps ridicule; and they all tax the English
vocabulary to extol Smith, his deeds, and his works. In putting forward
these tributes of admiration and affection, as well as in his constant
allusion to the ill requital of his services, we see a man fighting for
his reputation, and conscious of the necessity of doing so. He is ever
turning back, in whatever he writes, to rehearse his exploits and to
defend his motives.

The London to which Smith returned was the London of Shakespeare's day;
a city dirty, with ill-paved streets unlighted at night, no sidewalks,
foul gutters, wooden houses, gable ends to the street, set thickly with
small windows from which slops and refuse were at any moment of the day
or night liable to be emptied upon the heads of the passers by; petty
little shops in which were beginning to be displayed the silks and
luxuries of the continent; a city crowded and growing rapidly, subject
to pestilences and liable to sweeping conflagrations. The Thames had no
bridges, and hundreds of boats plied between London side and Southwark,
where were most of the theatres, the bull-baitings, the bear-fighting,
the public gardens, the residences of the hussies, and other amusements
that Bankside, the resort of all classes bent on pleasure, furnished
high or low. At no time before or since was there such fantastical
fashion in dress, both in cut and gay colors, nor more sumptuousness in
costume or luxury in display among the upper classes, and such squalor
in low life. The press teemed with tracts and pamphlets, written in
language "as plain as a pikestaff," against the immoralities of the
theatres, those "seminaries of vice," and calling down the judgment of
God upon the cost and the monstrosities of the dress of both men
and women; while the town roared on its way, warned by sermons, and
instructed in its chosen path by such plays and masques as Ben Jonson's
"Pleasure reconciled to Virtue."

The town swarmed with idlers, and with gallants who wanted advancement
but were unwilling to adventure their ease to obtain it. There was much
lounging in apothecaries' shops to smoke tobacco, gossip, and hear the
news. We may be sure that Smith found many auditors for his adventures
and his complaints. There was a good deal of interest in the New World,
but mainly still as a place where gold and other wealth might be got
without mu