none but privy councillors, and is as prone to belie their
acquaintance as he is a lady's favours. If he have but twelve pence in
his purse, he will give it for the best room in a playhouse. He goes to
sermons only to show his gay clothes, and if on other inferior days he
chance to meet his friend, he is sorry he sees him not in his best suit.

A PRISON.

It should be Christ's Hospital, for most of your wealthy citizens are
good benefactors to it; and yet it can hardly be so, because so few in
it are kept upon alms. Charity's house and this are built many miles
asunder. One thing notwithstanding is here praiseworthy, for men in this
persecution cannot choose but prove good Christians, in that they are a
kind of martyrs, and suffer for the truth. And yet it is so cursed a
piece of land that the son is ashamed to be his father's heir in it. It
is an infected pest-house all the year long; the plague-sores of the law
are the diseases here hotly reigning. The surgeons are atomies and
pettifoggers, who kill more than they cure. Lord have mercy upon us, may
well stand over these doors, for debt is a most dangerous and catching
city pestilence. Some take this place for the walks in Moorfields (by
reason the madmen are so near), but the crosses here and there are not
alike. No, it is not half so sweet an air. For it is the dunghill of the
law, upon which are thrown the ruins of gentry, and the nasty heaps of
voluntary decayed bankrupts, by which means it comes to be a perfect
medal of the iron age, since nothing but jingling of keys, rattling of
shackles, bolts, and grates are here to be heard. It is the horse of
Troy, in whose womb are shut up all the mad Greeks that were men of
action. The _nullum vacuum_ (unless in prisoners' bellies) is here truly
to be proved. One excellent effect is wrought by the place itself, for
the arrantest coward breathing, being posted hither, comes in three days
to an admirable stomach. Does any man desire to learn music; every man
here sings "Lachrymse" at first sight, and is hardly out. He runs
division upon every note, and yet (to their commendations be it spoken)
none of them for all that division do trouble the Church. They are no
Anabaptists; if you ask under what horizon this climate lies, the
Bermudas and it are both under one and the same height. And whereas some
suppose that this island like that is haunted with devils, it is not so.
For those devils so talked of and feared are none