and magnificence to the great.
Our English merchant converts the tin of his own country into gold, and
exchanges its wool for rubies. The Mahometans are clothed in our
British manufacture, and the inhabitants of the frozen zone warmed with
the fleeces of our sheep.

When I have been upon the change, I have often fancied one of our old
kings standing in person, where he is represented in effigy, and
looking down upon the wealthy concourse of people with which that place
is every day filled. In this case, how would he be surprised to hear
all the languages of Europe spoken in this little spot of his former
dominions, and to see so many private men, who in his time would have
been the vassals of some powerful baron, negotiating like princes for
greater sums of money than were formerly to be met with in the royal
treasury! Trade, without enlarging the British territories, has given
us a kind of additional empire. It has multiplied the number of the
rich, made our landed estates infinitely more valuable than they were
formerly, and added to them an accession of other estates as valuable
as the lands themselves.

(_The Spectator_, No. 69.)

{60}

RICHARD STEELE 1672-1729

SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY'S ANCESTORS

I was this morning walking in the gallery, when Sir Roger entered at
the end opposite to me, and advancing towards me, said he was glad to
meet me among his relations, the De Coverleys, and hoped I liked the
conversation of so much good company, who were as silent as myself. I
knew he alluded to the pictures, and as he is a gentleman who does not
a little value himself upon his ancient descent, I expected he would
give me some account of them. We were now arrived at the upper end of
the gallery, when the knight faced towards one of the pictures, and as
we stood before it he entered into the matter, after his blunt way of
saying things as they occur to his imagination, without regular
introduction, or care to preserve the appearance of chain of thought.

"It is," said he, "worth while to consider the force of dress; and how
the persons of one age differ from those of another, merely by that
only. One may observe also that the general fashion of one age has
been followed by one particular set of people in another, and by them
preserved from one generation to another. Thus the vast jetting coat
and small bonnet, which was the habit in Harry the Seventh's time, is
kept on in the Yeomen of the Guard; not w