Although London at the accession of James I.(1603) had only about one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants—­the population of England then numbering about five million—­it was so full of life and activity that Frederick, Duke of Wurtemberg, who saw it a few years before, in 1592, was impressed with it as a large, excellent, and mighty city of business, crowded with people buying and selling merchandise, and trading in almost every corner of the world, a very populous city, so that one can scarcely pass along the streets on account of the throng; the inhabitants, he says, are magnificently appareled, extremely proud and overbearing, who scoff and laugh at foreigners, and no one dare oppose them lest the street boys and apprentices collect together in immense crowds and strike to right and left unmercifully without regard to persons.

There prevailed an insatiable curiosity for seeing strange sights and hearing strange adventures, with an eager desire for visiting foreign countries, which Shakespeare and all the play-writers satirize.  Conversation turned upon the wonderful discoveries of travelers, whose voyages to the New World occupied much of the public attention.  The exaggeration which from love of importance inflated the narratives, the poets also take note of.  There was also a universal taste for hazard in money as well as in travel, for putting it out on risks at exorbitant interest, and the habit of gaming reached prodigious excess.  The passion for sudden wealth was fired by the success of the sea-rovers, news of which inflamed the imagination.  Samuel Kiechel, a merchant of Ulm, who was in London in 1585, records that, “news arrived of a Spanish ship captured by Drake, in which it was said there were two millions of uncoined gold and silver in ingots, fifty thousand crowns in coined reals, seven thousand hides, four chests of pearls, each containing two bushels, and some sacks of cochineal—­the whole valued at twenty-five barrels of gold; it was said to be one year and a half’s tribute from Peru.”

The passion for travel was at such a height that those who were unable to accomplish distant journeys, but had only crossed over into France and Italy, gave themselves great airs on their return.  “Farewell, monsieur traveler,” says Shakespeare; “look, you lisp, and wear strange suits; disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with your nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are, or I will scarce think you have swam in a gondola.”  The Londoners dearly loved gossip, and indulged in exaggeration of speech and high-flown compliment.  One gallant says to another:  “O, signior, the star that governs my life is contentment; give me leave to interre myself in your arms.”—­“Not so, sir, it is too unworthy an enclosure to contain such preciousness!”