conjurer that can call the winds from their brazen caves, and make the clouds travel before their time, I will give him the other hundred pounds to disturb the heavens a whole week together with thunder and lightning, if it be for nothing but to sour all the wines in Rome, and turn them to vinegar: as long as they have either oil or wine, this plague feeds but pinchingly upon them.' Zadock, Zadock,' said Zachary, cutting him off, 'thou threatenest the air, whilst we perish here on earth it is the Countess Juliana, the Marquis of Mantua's wife, and no other, that hath complotted our confusion; ask not how, but insist on my words, and assist in revenge.' As how, as how?' said Zadock, shrugging and shrubbing: More happy than the patriarchs were I, if crushed to death with the greatest torments Rome's tyrants have tried, there might be quintessenced out of me one quart of precious poison. I have a leg with an issue, shall I cut it off, and from this fount of corruption extract a venom worse than any serpent's? If thou wilt, I will go to a house that is infected, where catching the plague, and having got a running sore upon me, I will come and deliver her a supplication, and breathe upon her, when I am perfected with more putrefaction.' Zadock in conclusion is taken up and executed, and the description of his tortures is terrible in the extreme'; every circumstance attending them is minutely delineated in colours full as strong as the above. I persuade myself the reader will not be displeased, if I lay before him one extract more, in which he ridicules the affected dress and manners of the travelled gentlemen of his day: if we contemplate it as a painting of two hundred years' standing, I think it must be allowed to be a very curious sketch. • What is there in France to be learned more than in England, but falsehood in friendship, perfect slovenry, and to love no man but for my pleasure? I have known some that have continued there by the space of half a dozen years, and when they come home, they have hid a little weerish lean face under a broad French hat, kept a terrible coil with the dust in the street in their long cloaks of gray paper, and spoken English strangely. Nought else have they profited by their travel, but to distinguish the true Bourdeaux grape, and know a cup of neat Gascoigne wine from wine of Orleans; yea and peradventure this also, to esteem of the p-x as a pimple, to wear a velvet patch on their face, and walk melancholy with their arms folded. 'From Spain what bringeth our traveller? A skullcrowned hat of the fashion of an old deep porringer; a diminutive alderman's ruff with short strings, like the droppings of a man's nose; a close-bellied doublet coming down with a peak behind as far as the crupper, and cut off before by the breast-bone like a partlet or neckercher; a wide pair of gascoynes, which ungathered would make a couple of women's riding-kirtles; huge hangers, that have half a cowhide in them; a rapier that is lineally descended from half a dozen dukes at the least; let his cloak be as long or as short as you will; if long, it is faced with Turkey grogeran ravelled; if short, it hath a cape like a calf's tongue, and is not so deep in his whole length, nor so much cloth in it, I will justify, as only the standing cape of a Dutchman's cloak. I have not yet touched all, for he hath in either shoe as much taffaty for his tyings, as would serve for an ancient; which serveth him (if you would have the mystery of it) of the own accord for a shoe-rag. you talk with him, he makes a dishcloth of his own country in comparison of Spain; but if you urge him If particularly wherein it exceeds, he can give no instance, but in Spain they have better bread than any we have; when (poor hungry slaves!) they may crumble it into water well enough, and make misons with it, for they have not a good morsel of meat, except it be salt pilchers, to eat with it, all the year long; and, which is more, they are poor beggars, and lie in foul straw every night. 'Italy, the paradise of the earth, and the epicure's heaven, how doth it form our young master? Itmakes him to kiss his hand like an ape, cringe his neck like a starveling, and play at Hey-pass-repass-come aloft, when he salutes a man: from thence he brings the art of atheism, the art of epicurizing, the art of whoring, the art of poisoning, the art of sodomitry: the only probable good thing they have to keep us from utterly condemning it, is, that it maketh a man an excellent courtier, a curious carpet knight; which is by interpretation a fine close letcher, a glorious hypocrite: it is now a privy note amongst the better sort of men, when they would set a singular mark or brand on a notorious villain, to say he hath been in Italy.' I hope I need not observe that these descriptions are not here quoted for the truth they contain, but for the curiosity of them. Thomas Nashe was the bitterest satirist and controversialist of the age he lived in. NUMBER XL. ̓Απραγμόνως ζῆν, ἡδύ.-APOLLODORUS ADELPHIS. NED DROWSY came into possession of a good estate at a time of life, when the humours and habits contracted by education, or more properly by the want of it, become too much a part of the constitution to be conquered but by some extraordinary effort or event. Ned's father had too tender a concern for his health and morals to admit him of a public school, and the same objections held against a university: not that Ned was without his pretensions to scholarship, for it is well known that he has been sometimes found asleep upon his couch with a book open in his hand, which warrants a presumption that he could read, though I have not met any body yet, who has detected him in the act itself. The literature of the nursery he held in general contempt, and had no more passion for the feats of Jack the Giant-killer, when he was a child, than he had for the labours of Hercules in his more adult years: I can witness to the detestation in which he held the popular allegory of the Pilgrim's Progress, and when he had been told of the many editions that book has run through, he has never failed to reply, that there is no accounting for the bad taste of the vulgar: at the same time, I speak it to his honour, I have frequently known him express a tender fellow-feeling for the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, and betray more partiality than he was apt to be guilty of, to the edifying story of the Seven Dreamers, whom I verily believe he held in more respect than the Seven Wonders of the World. Rural sports were too boisterous for Ned's spirits: neither hares nor partridges could lay their deaths at his door, so that all his country neighbours gave him their good word, and poached his manors without mercy there was a canal in front of his house, where he would sometimes take up with the placid amusements of angling from an alcove by the side of it, with a servant in attendance for the purpose of baiting his hook, or calling upon him to pull, if by chance he was surprised with a bite: happily for his repose, this very rarely was the case, though a tradition runs in the family of his having once snapped an officious perch of extraordinary size. There was a learned practitioner in the law, one Mr. Driver, who had a house in his parish, and him Ned appointed manager of his estate; this worthy gentleman was so considerate as seldom if ever to give him any trouble about his accounts, well knowing his aversion for items and particulars, and the little turn he had to the drudgery of arithmetic and calculations. By the kind offices of Mr. Driver, Ned was relieved from an infinite deal of disagreeable business, and Mr. Driver himself suddenly became a man of considerable property, and began to take a lead in the county. Ned, together with his estate, had succeeded to a Chancerysuit, which was pending at the death of the late possessor: this suit was for a time carried on so prosperously by Mr. Driver, that nothing more seemed requisite to bring it to a favourable issue, than for Ned to make his appearance in court for some purposes I am not able to explain: this was an undertaking so insurmountable, that he could never be prevailed upon to set about it, and the suit was deserted accordingly. This suit, and the circumstance of a copper mine on his estate, which his agent never could engage him to work, were the |