lled herself by the
forged name of Competency offered herself for our guide. She carried
under her garment a golden bow, which she no sooner held up in her hand,
but the dogs lay down, and the gates flew open for our reception. We
were led through a hundred iron doors, before we entered the temple. At
the upper end of it sat the god of Avarice, with a long filthy beard,
and a meagre starved countenance, enclosed with heaps of ingots and
pyramids of money, but half naked and shivering with cold. On his right
hand was a fiend called Rapine, and on his left a particular favourite
to whom he had given the title of Parsimony. The first was his
collector, and the other his cashier.

There were several long tables placed on each side of the temple, with
respective officers attending behind them. Some of these I inquired
into. At the first table was kept the office of Corruption. Seeing a
solicitor extremely busy, and whispering everybody that passed by, I
kept my eye upon him very attentively, and saw him often going up to a
person that had a pen in his hand, with a multiplication table and an
almanac before him, which as I afterwards heard, was all the learning he
was master of. The solicitor would often apply himself to his ear, and
at the same time convey money into his hand, for which the other would
give him out a piece of paper or parchment, signed and sealed in form.
The name of this dexterous and successful solicitor was Bribery. At the
next table was the office of Extortion. Behind it sat a person in a
bob-wig, counting over a great sum of money. He gave out little purses
to several, who after a short tour brought him, in return, sacks full of
the same kind of coin. I saw at the same time a person called Fraud, who
sat behind a counter with false scales, light weights, and scanty
measures; by the skilful application of which instruments, she had got
together an immense heap of wealth. It would be endless to name the
several officers, or describe the votaries that attended in this temple.
There were many old men panting and breathless, reposing their heads on
bags of money; nay many of them actually dying, whose very pangs and
convulsions, which rendered their purses useless to them, only made them
grasp them the faster. There were some tearing with one hand all things,
even to the garments and flesh of many miserable persons who stood
before them, and with the other hand, throwing away what they had
seized, to harlots