degree of wealth.[1] The discovery of the New World, the resurrection of old literature, the trumpet of the Reformation scarcely quickened the national pulse with real life till the reign of Elizabeth. Then, however, there was revival, because there were possibilities of golden conquest in America, speculative treasures in the reanimate learning of Greece, and a new faith that seemed to thrust aside the curtain drawn by priests, and to open heaven. It is conceivable that our later world may find itself deprived of all that it valued on earth, of the pageantry of subject provinces and the reality of commerce, while it has neither a disinterred literature to amuse it nor a vitalised religion to give it spiritual strength.
The foregoing argument has assumed that the growth of China will be gradual and peaceable, and that India, if it ever becomes independent of England, will split up into a cluster of states, federated it may be, but not capable of an aggressive foreign policy. There is one possible alternative to this future too important to be disregarded. We are not yet able to say whether Mahommedanism has ceased to be a ferment and a great organising influence. It was beaten in the Indian Mutiny; it has been stamped out in Yunnan and Ili,
- ↑ "The population of this island does not appear to me to bear any proportion to her fertility and resources."—Italian Relation of England, c. 1500, p. 31. "Hereof is much experience had in England, France, and other lands, and cause hereof is this that evermore the world decreaseth in people."—Pecock's Represser of overmuch blaming of the Clergy, p. 306, c. 1449. When we remember that the population of England was "never in excess of 2,500,000, and was often less," down to the end of the sixteenth century, it will be evident that the Wars of the Roses, when as many as 30,000—by one estimate 38,000—perished in a single battle, that of Towton, must have reduced the population for a time nearly one-half. It is noticeable, that while 108,000 men were brought into the field at Towton, not more than about 30,000 were present at Bosworth.—Pauli's Geschichte Englands, Band v. SS. 359, 360, 511; Lingard's History of England, vol. v. pp. 173, 174, 270.
