dare to meddle with them. But talking is time lost; you were ever a couple of pitiful fellows, and your tails scarce worth the scalding. Have at ye,” says he, and at that word, with a huge iron bar he gave him such a salute over the buttocks, that he took two or three turns in the air, heels over head, and dropped at last into the common-shore; where never any man as yet found the bottom. When his companion had seen him cut that caper, “This usage,” says he, “may be well enough for a parchment gentleman; but for a cavalier of my extraction, and profession, I suppose you’ll treat him with somewhat more of civility and respect.” “Cavalier,” quoth the devil, “if you have brought no better plea along with you than the antiquity of your house, you may e’en follow your comrade, for ought I know, for we find very few ancient families that had not some oppressor or usurper for their founders; and they are commonly continued by the same means they were begun. How many are there of our titular nobility, that write Noble purely upon the account of their violence and injustice? Their subjects and tenants, what with impositions, hard services, and racked rents, are they not worse than slaves? If they happen to have anything extraordinary, as a pleasant fruit, a handsome colt, a good cow; and that the landlord, or his sweet lady take a liking to it, they must either submit to part with it gratis, or else take their pay in foul language or bastinadoes. And ’tis well if they ’scape so: for many times when the sign’s in Gemini, their wives and daughters go to pot, without any regard of laws either sacred or profane. What damned blasphemies and imprecations do they make use of, to get credit with a mistress or a creditor, upon a faithless promise! How intolerable is their pride and insolence, even towards many considerable officers, both in Church and State! for they behave themselves as if all people below their quality and rank in the world were but as so many brutes, or worse. As if human blood were not all of a colour; as if nature had not brought them into the world the common way, or moulded them of the same materials with the meanest wretches upon the earth. And then, for such as have military charges and commands, how many great officers are there, that without any consideration of their own, or their princes’ honour, fall to spoil and pillage? Cozening the State with false musters, and the soldiers of their pay; and giving them, instead of their due from the prince, a liberty of taking what is not their due from the people; forcing them to take the bread out of the poor labourers’ mouths to fill their own bellies, and protecting them when they have done in the most execrable outrages imaginable. And when the poor soldier comes at last to be dismissed, or disbanded; lame, sick, beggarly, naked almost, and enraged; with nothing left him to trust to but the highway to keep him from starving.