a long vacation, for that makes him bethink him how he shall shift another day.  He prays hotly against fasting, and so he may sup well on Friday nights, he cares not though his master be a puritan.  He practices to make the words in his declaration spread as a sewer doth the dishes of a niggard’s table; a clerk of a swooping dash is as commendable as a Flanders horse of a large tail.  Though you be never so much delayed you must not call his master knave, that makes him go beyond himself, and write a challenge in court hand, for it may be his own another day These are some certain of his liberal faculties; but in the term time his clog is a buckram bag.  Lastly, which is great pity, he never comes to his full growth, with bearing on his shoulder the sinful burden of his master at several courts in Westminster.

A FOOTMAN.

Let him be never so well made, yet his legs are not matches, for he is still setting the best foot forward.  He will never be a staid man, for he has had a running head of his own ever since his childhood.  His mother, which out of question was a light-heeled wench, knew it, yet let him run his race thinking age would reclaim him from his wild courses.  He is very long-winded, and without doubt but that he hates naturally to serve on horseback, he had proved an excellent trumpet.  He has one happiness above all the rest of the serving-men, for when he most overreaches his master he is best thought of.  He lives more by his own heat than the warmth of clothes, and the waiting-woman hath the greatest fancy to him when he is in his close trouses.  Guards he wears none, which makes him live more upright than any cross-gartered gentleman-usher.  ’Tis impossible to draw his picture to the life, because a man must take it as he’s running, only this, horses are usually let blood on St. Steven’s Day.  On St. Patrick’s he takes rest, and is drenched for all the year after.

A NOBLE AND RETIRED HOUSEKEEPER

Is one whose bounty is limited by reason, not ostentation; and to make it last he deals it discreetly, as we sow the furrow, not by the sack, but by the handful.  His word and his meaning never shake hands and part, but always go together.  He can survey good and love it, and loves to do it himself for its own sake, not for thanks.  He knows there is no such misery as to outlive good name, nor no such folly as to put it in practice.  His mind is so secure that thunder rocks him asleep, which breaks other men’s slumbers; nobility lightens in his eyes, and in his face and gesture is painted the god of hospitality.  His great houses bear in their front more durance than state, unless this add the greater state to them, that they promise to outlast much of our new fantastical buildings.  His heart never grows old, no more than his memory, whether at his book or on horseback.  He passeth his time in such noble exercise, a man