Among the numerous MS. letters of this kind, I have often observed the writer uneasy at the scandal he has seasoned his letter with, and concluding earnestly that his letter, after perusal, should be thrown to the flames.  A wish which appears to have been rarely complied with; and this may serve as a hint to some to restrain their tattling pens, if they regard their own peace; for, on most occasions of this nature, the letters are rather preserved with peculiar care.]

Such was this race of gossipers in the environs of a court, where, steeped in a supine lethargy of peace, corrupting or corrupted, every man stood for himself through a reckless scene of expedients and of compromises.

* * * * *

A PICTURE OF THE AGE FROM A MS. OF THE TIME.

A long reign of peace, which had produced wealth in that age, engendered the extremes of luxury and want.  Money traders practised the art of decoying the gallant youths of the day into their nets, and transforming, in a certain time, the estates of the country gentlemen into skins of parchment,

  The wax continuing hard, the acres melting.

MASSINGER.

Projectors and monopolists who had obtained patents for licensing all the inns and alehouses—­for being the sole vendors of manufactured articles, such as gold lace, tobacco-pipes, starch, soap, &c., were grinding and cheating the people to an extent which was not at first understood, although the practice had existed in the former reign.  The gentry, whose family pride would vie with these nouveaux riches, exhausted themselves in rival profusion; all crowded to “upstart London,” deserting their country mansions, which were now left to the care of “a poor alms-woman, or a bed-rid beadsman.”

In that day, this abandonment of the ancient country hospitality for the metropolis, and this breaking-up of old family establishments, crowded London with new and distinct races of idlers, or, as they would now be called, unproductive members of society.  From a contemporary manuscript, one of those spirited remonstrances addressed to the king, which it was probably thought not prudent to publish, I shall draw some extracts, as a forcible picture of the manners of the age.[A] Masters of ancient families, to maintain a mere exterior of magnificence in dress and equipage in the metropolis, were really at the same time hiding themselves in penury:  they thrust themselves into lodgings, and “five or six knights, or justices of peace,” with all their retinue, became the inmates of a shopkeeper; yet these gentlemen had once “kept the rusty chimneys of two or three houses smoking, and had been the feeders of twenty or forty serving-men:  a single page, with a guarded coat, served their turn now.”

[Footnote A:  The MS. is entitled “Balaam’s Ass, or a True Discoverie touching the Murmurs and Feared Discontents of the Times, directed to King James.”—­Lansdowne Collection, 209.  The writer, throughout, speaks of the king with the highest respect.]