examining your accompts. "I wonder at your riches, when I see you drink in a morning; but more at your confidence, when I see gray-beards come out of a tavern, and stay at the door to make the last debate of their business; and I am yet more amazed at your health, when I taste your wine; but most of all at your politicks, in permitting such public poisoning, under the style of free mystery, to encourage trade and diligence. "I would now make a safe retreat, but that methinks I am stopped by one of your heroic games, called _Foot-ball_; which I conceive (under your favour) not very conveniently civil in the streets, especially in such irregular and narrow roads as _Crooked-lane_. Yet it argues your courage much like your military pastime of Throwing at Cocks. But your mettle would be more magnified (since you have long allowed those valiant exercises in the street) to draw your Archers from Finsbury, and, during high market, let them shoot at butts in Cheapside. I have now no more to say but what refers to a few private notes, which I shall give you in a whisper when we meet in Moorfields; from whence (because the place was for public pleasure, and to shew the magnificence of your City) I shall desire you to banish the laundresses and bleachers, whose acres of old linen make a show like the fields of Carthagena, when the five months' shifts of the whole fleet are washed and spread." The following letter from the celebrated Erasmus to Dr. Francis, Physician to Cardinal Wolsey, will afford a disgusting view of the interior of common dwellings in the reign of Henry VIII.: "I often wonder, and not without concern, whence it comes to pass, that England for so many years hath been continually afflicted with pestilence; and above all with the sweating-sickness, which seems in a manner peculiar to that country. We read of a City which was delivered from a plague of long continuance, by altering the buildings according to the advice of a certain philosopher. I am much mistaken, if England, by the same method, might not find a cure. First of all, they are totally regardless concerning the aspect of their doors and windows to the East, North, &c. Then they build their chambers so that they admit not a thorough air, which yet, in Galen's opinion, is very necessary. They glaze a great part of the sides with small panes, designed to admit the light and exclude the wind; but these windows are full of chinks, through which enters a percolated air, which, stagnating in the room, is more noxious than the wind.