gullying, and carousing, till no Swab could
see another, and they were all as dronke as
rats. At the last (they must have got tipsy
very soon, or there must have been a very
long sermon at Anthony Hage's place of
worship), the Deuce, their host, told them
that they " must neede paie the shotte," (I
quote Stubbes literally), "whereat their hartes
waxed cold." But the Deuce, comforting
them, said: "'Be of good cheer, for I want no
money, and now you must drink hot boiling
pitch, lead, and brimstone in the pit, with
me for evermore." Hereupon, immediately,
he made their eyes like flames of fire, and in
breadth as broad as saucers. The Deuce
then broke their necks in sonder, and
when Anthony Hage came back from church
there was nothing left in the taproom
but several empty pots, a strong smell of
brimstone, and the body of Adam Giebens,
who was not dead, but in a fainting fit. It
will be remembered that Adam was the
Swab who said that he didn't mind going to
church if he couldn't get anything to drink;
in consideration of which instance of practical
piety he was spared by the demon potboy.

It cannot fail to strike the reader that this
wild story is a cousin-german to that of the
Handsome Clearstarcher. Mr. Stubbes, too,
seems fond of drawing his dismal legends
from the copious stores of German diablerie.
Having had his gird at drunkenness in
these set terms, Philip Stubbes proceeds to
demolish the landed gentlemen. Landlords,
he says, make merchandise of their poor
tenants, racking their rents, raising their
fines and incomes, and setting them so
strayt on the tenter-hooks that no man can
live on them. And besides this, as though
this pillage and pollage were not rapacious
enough, they take in and enclose commons,
moors, heaths whereout the poor commonaltie
were wont to have all their forage and feeding
for their cattle, and (which is more) corn for
themselves to live upon; all of which are in
most places taken from them by these
greedie puttockes [Have a care to thine ears,
O Stubbes!] to the great impoverishing and
utter beggaring of many towns and parishes,
"whose tragical cryes and clamours have long
pierced the skies, crying, ' How long, Lord,
how long wilt thou defer to revenge this
villany done to thy poor? ' Take heed, then,
you rich men, that poll and pill the poor, for
the blood of as many as miscarry any manner
of way through your injurious exactions, sinister
oppressions and indirect dealings, shall
be powred upon your heads at the great day
of the Lord."

As for lawyers, if you want to find vice
and corruption in full bloom, you must
go with Stubbes to Westminster Hall or
the inns of court. But it is no use going
there unless you are provided with good
store of argent rubrum unguentum—red
ointment, or gold, " to grease lawyers' fists
withal;" but if this be not forthcoming,
then farewell client: he may go shoe the
goose. The glimpse given to us of the progress
of a lawsuit in Queen Bess's time is
highly edifying, and has a strong family likeness
to the lawsuits now well and truly tried
before our Sovereign Lady the Queen at
Westminster:—" Sheriffs and officers do return
writs with a tardè venir, or with a non
est inventus, to keep the poor man from his
own. But so long as any of the red ointment
is propping, they will bear him in hand; his
matter is good and just, and all to keep him
in tow till all be gone, and then they will tell
him his matter is naught! In presence of
their clients they will be as earnest one with
another as one (that knew not their sleights)
would think they would go together by the
ears. But directly their clients be gone, they
laugh in their sleeves to think how prettily
they can fetch in such sums of money, and
that under the pretence of equity and justice."
As to the lawyers themselves, they
lead a happy life, like the Pope. They
ruffle it out in their silks, velvets, and chains
of gold. They keep a port like mighty
potentates; they have bands and retinues of
men in attendance upon them daily; they
build gorgeous edifices and stately turrets;
they purchase lands and lordships. Is this
not enough to make the mouths of all
Chancery Lane water? to awaken emotions
of melancholy envy of pallid and briefless
barristers eating the tips of their fingers and
the covers of their law books, and the skin
of their hearts, in studious, penniless, almost
hopeless idleness? Return again, ye golden
times—ye auriferous Stubbesian days—when
every stuff-gownsman wore a gold chain, and
every Q.C. lived in a stately turret; when
judges were corrupt, and lord chancellors
took " presents," and attorney-generals were
to be "spoken to," like prosecutors in assault
cases.

There is this, I think, in favour of my
Stubbes, that although severe, he is impartial.
To use an expressive though inelegant metaphor,
he tars everybody with the same brush.
No sooner has he administered to the lawyers
those sable trickling drops and penal plumes,
by which Sydney Smith has poetised the
somewhat prosaic operation of tarring and
feathering, than he proceeds to attack the
mercantile community. The "marchaunt-men,
by their marting, chaffering, and changing,
by their counterfeit balances and untrue
weights, and by their surprising of their
wares (?), heap up infinite treasure. And
this," Mr. Stubbes continues, "maketh things
deare." These avaricious marchauntmen
have so "balaunced their chests that they
crack again;" and so greedy grow they, that
though overflowing with wealth, they will not
scruple to take their neighbour's house over
his head, long before his years are expired,
And besides all this, "so desperately given
are many, that for the acquiring of silver and