s of his schemes, and to realize, as he did,
the importance of securing the new empire to the English before it
was occupied by the Spanish and the French. His conceit, his
boasting, and his overbearing manner, which no doubt was one of the
causes why he was unable to act in harmony with the other adventurers
of that day, all told against him. He was that most uncomfortable
person, a man conscious of his own importance, and out of favor and
out of money.

Yet Smith had friends, and followers, and men who believed in him.
This is shown by the remarkable eulogies in verse from many pens,
which he prefixes to the various editions of his many works. They
seem to have been written after reading the manuscripts, and prepared
to accompany the printed volumes and tracts. They all allude to the
envy 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