trial development with that of mediæval feudalism in all its various surviving forms continues. It is not so easy here as in the Roman dramas to express a decided opinion, and every bold free utterance might meet with a dubious or displeased reception. But I cannot here refrain from one remark.
It is unintelligible to me how certain German commentators take side with the English party, and that very decidedly, when they speak of those French wars which are depicted in the dramas of Shakespeare. For, in truth, in those wars the English had with them neither justice nor poetry. For they partly concealed the coarsest spirit of robbery under worthless claims of succession, and in part made war as mean mercenaries in the vulgar interests of mere merchants or shopmen just as they do to-day in these our times, only that in the nineteenth century they deal more in coffee and sugar, whereas in the fourteenth and fifteenth it was in sheep's wool.[1]
Hichelet, in that genial work, his "History of France," remarks very truly :
"The secret of the battles of Cressy, Poitiers, &c., is to be sought in the counting-houses of the merchants of London, of Bordeaux and Bruges. . . . Wool and meat founded the original Eng-
- ↑ Or, as men say in the American stock-market, "lambs," meaning victims. The allusion may be taken to drawing the wool over one's eyes, to blind a victim to its fate, as well as to literal trade in wool.—Translator.
