wise ordered by the council; and the king almost immediately set it aside.

A manufacturing district, as we see in our own country, sends out, as it were, suckers into all its neighbourhood. Accordingly, the woollen manufacture spread from Flanders along the banks of the Rhine, and into the northern provinces of France. I am not, how ever, prepared to trace its history in these regions. In Germany, the privileges conceded by Henry 5th, to the free cities, and especially to their artisans, gave a soul to industry; though the central parts of the empire were, for many reasons, very ill calculated for commercial enterprize during the middle ages. But the French towns were never so much eman cipated from arbitrary power as those of Germany or Flanders; and the evils of exorbitant taxation, with those produced by the English wars, conspired to retard the advance of manufactures in France. That of linen made some little progress; but this work was still perhaps chiefly confined to the labour of female servants.

The manufactures of Flanders and England found a market, not only in these adjacent countries, but in a part of Europe which for many ages had only been known enough to be dreaded. In the middle of the eleventh century, a native of Bremen, and a writer much superior to most others of his time, was almost entirely ignorant of the geography of the Baltic; doubting whether any one had reached Russia by that sea, and reckoning Esthonia and Cour

land among its islands. But in one hundred years more, the maritime regions of Mecklenburg and Pomerania, inhabited by a tribe of heathen Sclavonians, were subdued by some German princes; and the Teutonic order some time afterwards, having conquered Prussia, extended a line of at least comparative civilization as far as the gulf of Finland. The first town erected on the coasts of the Baltic was Lubec, which owes its foundation to Adolphus, count of Holstein, in 1140. After several vicissitudes, it became independent of any sovereign but the emperor in the thirteenth century. Hamburgh and Bremen, upon the other side of the Cimbric peninsula, emulated the prosperity of Lubec; the former city purchased independence of its bishop in

1225.

A colony from Bremen founded Riga in Livonia, about 1192. The city of Dantzic grew into importance about the end of the following century. Konigsberg was founded by Ottocar king of Bohemia in the same age.

But the real importance of these cities is to be dated from their famous union into the Hanseatic confederacy. The origin of this is rather obscure, but it may certainly be nearly referred in point of time to the middle of the thirteenth century, and accounted for by the necessity of mutual defence, which piracy by sea and pillage by land had taught the merchants of Germany. The nobles endeavoured to obstruct the formation of this league, which indeed was in great measure designed to withstand their

exactions.

exactions. It powerfully maintained the influence which the free imperial cities were at this time acquiring. Eighty of the most considerable places constituted the Hanseatic confederacy, divided into four colleges, whereof Lubec, Cologne, Brunswic and Dantzic were the leading towns. Lubec held the chief rank, and became, as it were, the patriarchal see of the league; whose province it was to preside in all general discussions for mercantile, political, or military purposes, and to carry them into execution. The league had four principal factories in foreign parts, at London, Bruges, Burgen and Novogorod; endowed by the sovereigns of those cities with considerable privileges, to which every merchant belonging to a Hanseatic town was entitled. In England the German guildhall or factory was established by concession of Henry 3rd; and in later periods, the Hanse traders were favoured above any others in the capricious vacillations of our mercantile policy. The English had also their factories on the Baltic coast as far as Prussia, and in the dominions of Denmark.

This opening of a northern market powerfully accelerated the growth of our own commercial opulence, especially after the woollen manufacture had begun to thrive. From about the middle of the fourteenth century, we find continual evidences of a rapid increase in wealth. Thus, in 1363, Picard, who had been lord mayor some years before, entertained Edw. 3rd, and the Black Prince, the kings of France, Scotland and

Cyprus, with many of the nobility, at his own house in the Vintry, and presented them with handsome gifts. Philpot, another eminent citizen, in Richard 2nd's time, when the trade of England was considerably annoyed by privateers, hired 1,000 armed men, and dispatched them to sea, where they took fifteen Spanish vessels with their prizes. We find Richard obtaining a great deal from private merchants and trading towns. In 1379, he got 5,000l. of London, 1,000 marks of Bristol, and in proportion from smaller places. In 1386, London gave 4,000l. more, and 10,000 marks in 1397. The latter sum was obtained also for the coronation of Henry 6th. Nor were the contributions of individuals contemptible, considering the high value of money. Hinde, a citizen of London, lent to Henry 4th 2,000l. in 1407, and Whittington one half of that sum. The merchants of the staple advanced 4,000l. at the same time. Our commerce continued to be regularly and rapidly progressive during the fifteenth century. The famous Canynges of Bristol, under Henry 6th and Edward 4th, had ships of 900 tons burthen. The trade and even the internal wealth of England reached so much higher a pitch in the reign of the last mentioned king than at any former period, that we may perceive the wars of York and Lancaster to have produced no very serious effect on national prosperity. Some battles were doubtless sanguinary; but the loss of lives in battle is soon repaired by a flourishing nation; and the devasta

tion occasioned by armies was both partial and transitory.

A commercial intercourse between these northern and southern regions of Europe began about the early part of the fourteenth century, or, at most, a little sooner. Until indeed the use of the magnet was thoroughly understood, and a competent skill in marine architecture, as well as navigation, acquired, the Italian merchants were scarce likely to attempt a voyage perilous in itself, and rendered more formidable by the imaginary difficulties which had been supposed to attend an expedition beyond the straits of Hercules. But the English, accustomed to their own rough seas, were always more intrepid, and probably more skilful navigators. Though it was extremely rare even in the fifteenth century for an English trading vessel to appear in the Mediterranean, yet a famous military armament, that destined for the crusade of Richard 1st, displayed at a very early time the seamanship of our countrymen. In the reign of Edward 2nd, we find mention in Rymer's collection of Genoese ships trading to Flanders and England. His son was very solicitous to preserve the friendship of that opulent republic; and it is by his letters to the senate, or by royal orders restoring ships unjustly seized, that we come by a knowledge of those facts, which historians neglect relate. Pisa shared a little in this traffic, and Venice more considerably; but Genoa was beyond all competition at the head of Italian commerce in these seas during the

fourteenth century. In the next, her general decline left it more open to her rival; but I doubt whether Venice ever maintained so strong a connexion with England. Through London, and Bruges, their chief station in Flanders, the merchants of Italy and of Spain transported oriental produce to the farthest parts of the north. The inhabitants of the Baltic coasts were stimulated by the desire of precious luxuries which they had never known; and these wants, though selfish and frivolous, are the means by which nations acquire civility, and the earth is rendered fruitful of its produce. As the carriers of this trade, the Hanseatic merchants resident in England and Flanders derived profits through which eventually of course those countries were enriched. It seems that the Italian vessels unloaded at the marts of London or Bruges, and that such part of their cargoes as were intended for a more northern trade came there into the hands of the German merchants. In the reign of Henry 6th, England carried on a pretty extensive traffic with the countries around the Mediterranean, for whose commodities her wool and woollen cloths enabled her to pay.

The commerce of the southern division, though it did not, I think, produce more extensively beneficial effects upon the progress of society, was both earlier and more splendid than that of England, and the neighbouring countries. Besides Venice, which has been mentioned already, Amalfi kept up the commercial intercourse of Christendom with

the

the Saracen countries before the first crusade. It was the singular fate of this city to have filled up the interval between two periods of civilization, in neither of which she was destined to be distinguished. Scarcely known before the end of the sixth century, Amalfi ran a brilliant but short career, as a free and trading republic, which was checked by the arms of a conqueror in the middle of the twelfth. Since her subjugation by Roger king of Sicily, the name of a people who for a while connected Europe with Asia has hardly been repeated, except for two discoveries falsely imputed to them, those of the Pandects and of the compass.

But the decline of Amalfi was amply compensated to the rest of Italy by the constant elevation of Pisa, Genoa, and Venice in the twelfth and ensuing ages. The crusades led immediately to this growing prosperity of the commercial cities. Besides the profit accruing from so many naval armaments which they supplied, and the continual passage of private adventurers in their vessels, they were enabled to open a more extensive channel of oriental traffic than had hitherto been known. These three Italian republics enjoyed immunities in the Christian principalities of Syria; possessing separate quarters in Acre, Tripoli, and other cities, where they were governed by their own laws and magistrates. Though the progress of commerce must, from the condition of European industry, have been slow, it was uninterrupted; and the settlements in Palestine were be

coming important as factories, an use of which Godfrey and Urban little dreamed, when they were lost through the guilt and imprudence of their inhabitants. Villani laments the injury sustained by commerce in consequence of the capture of Acre, 26 situated, as it was, on the coast of the Mediterranean, in the centre of Syria, and, as we might say, of the habitable world, a haven for all merchandize, both from the east, and the west, which all the nations of the earth frequented for this trade." But the loss was soon retrieved, not perhaps by Pisa and Genoa, but by Venice, who formed connexions with the Saracen governments, and maintained her commercial intercourse with Syria and Egypt by their licence, though subject probably to heavy exactions. Sanuto, a Venetian author at the beginning of the fourteenth century, has left a curious account of the Levant trade which his countrymen carried on at that time. Their imports it is easy to guess, and it appears that timber, brass, tin, and lead, as well as the precious metals, were exported to Alexandria, besides oil, saffron, and some of the productions of Italy, and even wool and woollen cloths. The European side of the account had therefore be come respectable.

The commercial cities enjoyed as great privileges at Constantinople as in Syria, and they bore an eminent part in the vicissitudes of the Eastern empire. After the capture of Constantinople by the Latin crusaders, the Venetians having been concerned in that conquest, became of course the

favoured

favoured traders under the new dynasty; possessing their own district in the city, with their magistrate or podesta, appointed at Venice, and subject to the parent republic. When the Greeks recovered the seat of their empire, the Genoese, who from jealousy of their rivals had contributed to that revolution, obtained similar immunities. This powerful and enterprizing state, in the fourteenth century, sometimes the ally, sometimes the enemy of the Byzantine count, maintained its independent settlement at Pera. From thence, she spread her sails into the Euxine, and, planting a colony at Caffa in the Crimea, extended a line of commerce with the interior regions of Asia, which even the skill and spirit of our own times has not yet been able to revive.

The French provinces which border on the Mediterranean Sea partook in the advantages which it offered. Not only Marseilles, whose trade had continued in a certain degree throughout the worst ages, but Narbonne, Nismes, and especially Montpellier, were distinguished for commercial prosperity. A still greater activity prevailed in Catalonia. From the middle of the thirteenth century (for we need not trace the rudiments of its history) Barcelona began to emulate the Ita lian cities in both the branches of naval energy, war and commerce. Engaged in frequent and severe hostilities with Genoa, and sometimes with Constantinople, while their vessels traded to every part of the Mediterranean, and even of the English channel, the Catalans might justly be

reckoned among the first of maritime nations. The commerce of Barcelona has never since attained so great a height as in the fifteenth century.

The introduction of a silk manufacture at Palermo, by Roger Guiscard in 1148, gave perhaps the earliest impulse to the industry of Italy. Nearly about the same time, the Genoese plundered two Moorish cities of Spain, from which they derived the same art. In the next age, this became a staple manufacture of the Lom bard and Tuscan republics, and the cultivation of mulberries was enforced by their laws. Woollen stuffs, though the trade was perhaps less conspicuous than that of Flanders, and though many of the coarser kinds were imported from thence, employed a multitude of workmen in Italy, Catalonia, and the south of France. Among the trading companies into which the middling ranks were distributed, those concerned in silk and woollens were most numerous and honourable.

A property of a natural substance, long overlooked even though it attracted observation by a different peculiarity, has influenced by its accidental discovery the fortunes of mankind, more than all the deductions of philosophy. It is perhaps impossible to ascertain the epoch when the polarity of the magnet was first known in Europe. The common opinion, which ascribes its discovery to a citizen of Amalfi in the fourteenth century, is undoubtedly erroneous. Guiot de Provins, a French poet who lived about the year 1,200, or at the latest, under St. Louis, describes