and emigration was assisting the enemy in preying upon their native country.  Brandschatzung, burglary, highway-robbery, and murder, had become the chief branches of industry among the working classes.  Nobles and wealthy burghers had been changed to paupers and mendicants.  Many a family of ancient lineage, and once of large possessions, could be seen begging their bread, at the dusk of evening, in the streets of great cities, where they had once exercised luxurious hospitality; and they often begged in vain.

For while such was the forlorn aspect of the country—­and the portrait, faithfully sketched from many contemporary pictures, has not been exaggerated in any of its dark details—­a great famine smote the land with its additional scourge.  The whole population, soldiers and brigands, Spaniards and Flemings, beggars and workmen, were in danger of perishing together.  Where the want of employment had been so great as to cause a rapid depopulation, where the demand for labour had almost entirely ceased, it was a necessary result, that during the process, prices should be low, even in the presence of foreign soldiery, and despite the inflamed’ profits, which such capitalists as remained required, by way not only of profit but insurance, in such troublous times.  Accordingly, for the last year or two, the price of rye at Antwerp and Brussels had been one florin for the veertel (three bushels) of one hundred and twenty pounds; that of wheat, about one-third of a florin more.  Five pounds of rye, therefore, were worth, one penny sterling, reckoning, as was then usual, two shillings to the florin.  A pound weight of wheat was worth about one farthing.  Yet this was forty-one years after the discovery of the mines of Potosi (A.D. 1545), and full sixteen years after the epoch; from which is dated that rapid fall in the value of silver, which in the course of seventy years, caused the average price of corn and of all other commodities, to be tripled or even quadrupled.  At that very moment the average cost of wheat in England was sixty-four shillings the quarter, or about seven and sixpence sterling the bushel, and in the markets of Holland, which in truth regulated all others, the same prices prevailed.  A bushel of wheat in England was equal therefore to eight bushels in Brussels.

Thus the silver mines, which were the Spanish King’s property, had produced their effect everywhere more signally than within the obedient Provinces.  The South American specie found its way to Philip’s coffers, thence to the paymasters of his troops in Flanders, and thence to the commercial centres of Holland and England.  Those countries, first to feel and obey the favourable expanding impulse of the age, were moving surely and steadily on before it to greatness.  Prices were rising with unexampled rapidity, the precious metals were comparatively a drug, a world-wide commerce, such as had never been dreamed of, had become an every-day concern, the arts and sciences and a most generous culture in famous schools and universities, which had been founded in the midst of tumult and bloodshed, characterized the republic, and the golden age of English poetry, which was to make the Elizabethan era famous through all time, had already begun.