STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685 .

285

By plundering the public creditor, it was possible to make c ^ p -

an income of about fourteen hundred thousand pounds, with-

some occasional help from France, support the necessarycharges of the government and the wasteful expenditure of thecourt. For that load which pressed most heavily on thefinances of the great continental states was here scarcely felt.

In France, Germany, and the Netherlands, armies, such asHenry the Fourth and Philip the Second had never employedin time of war, were kept up in the midst of peace. Bastionsand ravelins were everywhere rising, constructed on principlesunknown to Parma or Spinola. Stores of artillery and am-munition were accumulated, such as even Richelieu, whom thepreceding generation had regarded as a worker of prodigies,would have pronounced fabulous. No man could journeymany leagues in those countries without hearing the drums ofa regiment on march, or being challenged by the sentinels onthe draw-bridge of a fortress. In our island, on the contrary, Militaryit was possible to live long and to travel far, without being once SJSlem 'reminded, by any martial sight or sound, that the defence ofnations had - become a science and a calling. The majority ofEnglishmen who were under twenty-five years of age had pro-bably never seen a company of regular soldiers. Of the citieswhich, in the civil war, had valiantly repelled hostile armies,scarce one was now capable of sustaining a siege. The gatesstood open night and day. The ditches were dry. The ram-parts had been suffered to fall into decay, or were repairedonly that the townsfolk might have a pleasant walk on summerevenings. . Of the old baronial keeps many had been shatteredby the cannon of Fairfax and Cromwell, and lay in heaps ofruin, overgrown with ivy. Those which remained had losttheir martial character, and^were now rural palaces of thearistocracy. The moats were turned into preserves of carpand pike. The mounds were planted with fragrant shrubs,through which spiral walks ran up to summer houses adorned