You keep open houses for all that bring you in mirth, till your estate run out of doors, and find new landlords: we shut our gate to all but such whose conversation brings in profit; and so, by the help of what you call ill-nature and parsimony, have the good luck to keep our inheritance for our issue.
"Before I leave you in your Houses (where your estates are managed by your servants, and your persons educated by your Wives), I will take a short survey of your Children: to whom you are so terrible, that you seem to make use of authority whilst they are young, as if you knew it would not continue till their manhood: you begin with them in such rough discipline, as if they were born mad, and you meant to fright them into their wits again before they had any to lose. When they increase in years, you make them strangers; keeping them at such distance, out of jealousy they should presume to be your companions, that, when they reach manhood, they use you as if they were none of your acquaintance. If you take pains to teach them any thing, it is only what they should not learn, bashfulness; which you interpret to be their respect to you, but it rather shews they are in trouble, and afraid of you; and not only of you, but all that are older than themselves; as if youth were a crime, or as if you had a greater quarrel to Nature than to the Devil. You seem to teach
them to be ashamed of their persons, even when you are willing to excuse their faults. This education you give them at home; but though you have frequently the pride to disdain the behaviour of other nations, yet you have sometimes the discretion to send your sons abroad to learn it. To Paris they come, the school of Europe; where is taught the approaches and demeanours towards power; where they may learn honour, which is the generous honesty, which is the civil boldness of courts. But there they arrive not to converse with us, but themselves; to see the gates of the Court, not to enter and frequent it; or to take a hasty survey of greatness as far as envy, but not to study it as far as imitation; at last return home, despising those necessary virtues which they took not pains to acquire; and are only ill-altered in their dress and mind, by making that a deformity in seeming over-careful and forced, which we make graceful in being negligent and easy. I have now left your Houses, and am passing through your Streets; but not in a Coach, for they are uneasily hung, and so narrow that I took them for a Sedan upon wheels: nor is it safe for a stranger to use them, till the quarrel be decided, whether six of your nobles, sitting together, shall stop, and give place to as many barrels of beer. Your City is the only Metropolis of Europe where there is a wonderful dignity belonging to Carts. Master Londoner,
be not so hot against Coaches: take advice from one who eats much sorrel in his broth. Can you be too civil to such gentry as bravely scorn to be provident?—who, when they have no business here to employ them, nor public pleasures to divert them, yet even then kindly invent occasions to bring them hither, that at your own rates they may change their land for our wares, and have purposely avoided the coarse study of arithmetick, lest they should be able to affront you with examining your accompts.
"I wonder at your riches, when I see you drink in a morning; but more at your confidence, when I see gray-beards come out of a tavern, and stay at the door to make the last debate of their business; and I am yet more amazed at your health, when I taste your wine; but most of all at your politicks, in permitting such public poisoning, under the style of free mystery, to encourage trade and diligence.
"I would now make a safe retreat, but that methinks I am stopped by one of your heroic games, called Foot-ball; which I conceive (under your favour) not very conveniently civil in the streets, especially in such irregular and narrow roads as Crooked-lane. Yet it argues your courage much like your military pastime of Throwing at Cocks. But your mettle would be more magnified (since you have long allowed those valiant exercises in the street) to draw your
Archers from Finsbury, and, during high market, let them shoot at butts in Cheapside. I have now no more to say but what refers to a few private notes, which I shall give you in a whisper when we meet in Moorfields; from whence (because the place was for public pleasure, and to shew the magnificence of your City) I shall desire you to banish the laundresses and bleachers, whose acres of old linen make a show like the fields of Carthagena, when the five months' shifts of the whole fleet are washed and spread."
The following letter from the celebrated Erasmus to Dr. Francis, Physician to Cardinal Wolsey, will afford a disgusting view of the interior of common dwellings in the reign of Henry VIII.:
"I often wonder, and not without concern, whence it comes to pass, that England for so many years hath been continually afflicted with pestilence; and above all with the sweating-sickness, which seems in a manner peculiar to that country. We read of a City which was delivered from a plague of long continuance, by altering the buildings according to the advice of a certain philosopher. I am much mistaken, if England, by the same method, might not find a cure. First of all, they are totally regardless concerning the aspect of their doors and windows to the East, North, &c. Then they build their chambers so that they admit not a thorough air, which yet, in Galen's opinion, is very necessary. They glaze a
great part of the sides with small panes, designed to admit the light and exclude the wind; but these windows are full of chinks, through which enters a percolated air, which, stagnating in the room, is more noxious than the wind.