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dog: thousands of distressed persons have shared their miserable meals with this description of grateful attendant; and the rich have been known to erect monuments to their memories. As these animals were inhabitants of England from time immemorial, the friendship of them and their masters commenced at the same unknown period. The only author I recollect to have censured this amiable intercourse is the fanatical Bunyan, who, in his "Sighs from Hell, or the Groans of a damned Soul," abuses Christians for giving to dogs the crumbs belonging to the poor. "How many pounds (he enquires) do some men spend a year on their dogs, while the poor saints of God may starve for hunger? They will build houses for their dogs, when the saints must be glad to wander, and lodge in dens and caves of the earth.

Again, some men cannot go half a mile from home, but they must have dogs at their heels; but they can very willingly go half a score miles without the society of a Christian." This wretched sinner, who envied the participation of dogs in the favours of the rich, did not seem to be aware that brutal and uncharitable persons seldom or ever keep dogs; or if they do, they are kept in their places, according to the vulgar acceptation of kindness.

"Love me, love antiquity, and far

my dog," is an adage of great more honourable to him who uses it, than all the sighs vented by Bunyan for every person's

sins but his own. For my own part, I dwell with satisfaction upon the certainty that all domestic animals (the dog, the cat, the singing bird, &c. &c.) are cherished and have been cherished by their kind masters and mistresses before and since the Conquest. Nor is it less grateful to reflect, that thousands of instances have occurred of the rough attachment of men and horses, not only in the higher ranks, but between them and their drivers in the lowest; though it must be confessed, that too many of the domestic animals are most basely and cruelly treated; nor do suppose the persons so acting would use Christians much better if they dared.

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Ward, of Ipswich (who preached an assize sermon at Bury St. Edmunds, in 1627, alluded to above), boldly attacked his legal audience for the practice or custom of buying and selling offices. "O gall of bitterness! O root of all evil to Church and Commonwealth!- when authorities and officers of justice shall be bought and sold, as with a trumpet or drum, to the candle, or out-rope! The particular branches whereof when I seriously consider, I wonder not that Christ, with such zealous severity, brake down the banks, and whipped out the chapmen out of the temple; nor that Peter, with such fiery indignation, buried Simon and his money. For if such men and money perish not, kingdoms and churches must perish; and both civil and eccle

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siastical courts will soon prove dens of thieves. Whose soul bleeds not to see men's souls bought and sold like sheep at the market to every butcher? Of this you lawyers much complain against the clergymen for buying of benefices: which you might do the more justly, if yourselves were not often the sellers of them! I would the fault rested only in benefices, and reached not into offices and civil dignities. Indeed that kind of purchase we call simony, it may from its other name be fitlier styled magick; for I know not what kind of witchcraft men sin by leave and law in these civil purchases. The laws and statutes provide for the remedy of the evil in some cases, tolerating it in others; and the practice, by means of this allowance, growing intolerable :- -some of them (as the world reports) offices for life and at pleasure, amounting to the rate of lands and inheritances."

He afterwards tells his auditors, that the "strait buttoned carpet and effeminate gentry," acting as justices and judges, "cannot hold out a forenoon or afternoon sitting without a tobacco bait, or a game at bowls."

Reeve (whose Plea for Nineveh I have found an useful book in compiling these pages) gives a strong but probably too high-coloured a picture of the merchants and citizens of 1657. He tells them, "If thou beest for profit, thy ranges are known. After thou hast called up thy servants

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to hunt for gain at home, thou thyself (as one in full quest for lucre abroad) art visiting other men's storehouses, searching their warehouses, ransacking their cellars. Thou goest to the custom-house, to try what exporting and importing there hath been; thou repairest to the Exchange, to examine what merchant thou canst meet with, with whom thou may'st truck in minivers and tissues, musks and civits, the teeth of elephants, the bones of whales, the stones of bezars, the claws of crabs, the oyles of swallows, the skins of vipers; yea, be it but in black coal, black pitch, white chalk or white soap, rusty iron or abominable mummy, it will serve the turn. Or if thy merchandize fail there, thou turnest thy trading another way, to seek about for a licence. or a patent; or, perhaps, to pry out some decayed heir or foundered gallant, that thy ferret might be sent forth into that borough, or thy setting-dog let loose to drive that covey; to hookin some mortgage, or to prey upon some forfeiture. And if all these devices will not take place, then thou stirrest thy legs to go suck venom from a pettyfogger, or magick from some conjurer. And thus doth the drudge of the world spend his day.

"If thou beest for bravery, I cannot follow thee by the track, nor find out thy various motions. The gallant is counted a wild creatureno wild colt, wild ostrich, wild cat of the moun

tain, comparable to him; he is, indeed, the buffoon and baboon of the times; his mind is wholly set upon cuts and slashes, knots and roses, patchings and pinkings, jaggings, taggings, borderings, brimmings, half shirts, half arms, yawning breasts, gaping knees, arithmetical middles, geometrical sides, mathematical wastes, musical heels, and logical toes. I wonder he is not for the Indian's branded skin and ringed snout. His fantastic dotages are so many, that he hath free-school bookish about inventions for him; nay, an academy of wits, studying deeply to devise fashions according to his humour: know ye not the multitude of students, artists, graduates, that are subliming their notions to please this one light head? then hear them by their names-perfumers, complexioners, feather-makers, stitchers, snippers, drawers; yea, who not? Yet amongst these doth the knighted spark spend out his time. This is the gallant's day.

"If thou beest for dainties, how art thou then for spread-tables and plenished flagons? Thou art but a pantry-worm, and a pastry-fly; thou art all for in-landish meat, and out-landish sauces; thou art the dapifer to thy palate, or the cupbearer to thy appetite; the creature of the swallow, or the slave of the weason. The land hath scarce flesh, the sea fish, or the air fowl, curious enough for thy licorous throat. By thy good will thou wouldst eat nothing but kids and fawns

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