now become known to all the nations of the North; while they were rapidly gaining an insight into the most profitable mode of conducting it, and ascertaining the class of goods best adapted for the markets of the East, and the description of vessels most suitable for carrying on the trade.
Rapid increase of the trade of Flanders. The people occupying the Netherlands, observing on the one hand how English genius and energy were being wasted in war, and, on the other, perceiving the vast progress of the Italian republics, and the wealth which their inhabitants had accumulated by their intercourse with the East, endeavoured, and with success, to imitate their example. Besides being carriers by sea they became themselves large manufacturers, opening up an extensive trade with Persia through the medium of Constantinople, and enjoying during the reign of Baldwin, Count of Flanders, an amount of prosperity second only to that of Venice, then the chief of the Italian republics. Protected by the franchises which their energy had wrung from their lords paramount, the inhabitants of Flanders were thus induced to apply themselves with vigour to commercial and manufacturing pursuits. Almost every town emulated its neighbour in works of usefulness or taste, exhibiting alike their habits of industry and their inventive genius. Their population increased to an astonishing extent, their wealth in a yet greater ratio; and the modern traveller may note in buildings still extant the superabundant pecuniary resources of that period, and the joint results of freedom from war and of unwearied industry.
Somewhere towards the close of the thirteenth century the merchant vessels of the Italian republics
