banquetting house.

O _Rome_, if thou hast in thee such soule-exalting obiects: what a
thing is heauen in comparison of thee, of which _Mercators_ globe is a
perfecter modell than thou art? Yet this I must say to the shame of vs
Protestants, if good workes may merit heauen, they doo them, we talke of
them. Whether superstition or no makes the vnprofitable seruants,
that let pulpets decide: but there, you shall haue the brauest Ladies in
gownes of beaten gold, washing pilgrimes and poore souldiours feete
and dooing nothing they and their wayting mayds all the yeare long, but
making shirts and bandes for them against they come by in distresse.
Their hospitalls are more like noblemens houses than otherwise: so
richly furnished, cleane kept, and hot perfumed, that a souldiour would
thinke it a sufficient recompence for his trauell and his wounds, to
haue such a heauenly retyring place. For the Pope and his pontificalibus
I will not deale with, onely I will dilate vnto you what hapned whiles I
was in _Rome_.

So it fell out, that it being a vehement hot summer when I was a
soiourner there, there entred such a hotspurd plague as hath not been
heard of: why it was but a word and a blow, Lord haue mercie vpon vs,
and he was gone. Within three quarters of a yere in that one citie there
dyed of it a hundred thousand: Looke in _Lanquets_ Chronicle and you
shall finde it. To smell of a nosegay, that was poysond: and turne your
nose to a house, that had the plague, it was all one. The clouds like
a number of cormorants, that keepe their corne till it stinke and is
mustie, kept in their stinking exhalations, till they had almost stifled
all _Romes_ inhabitants. Phisitions, greedines of golde made them
greedie of their destinie. They would come to visite those, with whose
infirmities their arte had no affinitie: and euen as a man with a fee
should bee hyred to hang himselfe, so would they quietly goe home and
dye presently after they had been with their patients. All day and all
night long carremen did nothing but goe vp and downe the streetes with
their carts and crye, Haue you anie dead to burie, haue you anie dead
to burie: and had manie times out of one house their whole loading: one
graue was the sepulcher of seuenscore, one bed was the altar whereon
whole families were offered.

The wals were hoard and furd with the moist scorching steam of their
desolation. Euen as before a gun is shot off, a stinking smoake funnels
out, an