“If you have gone beyond the hearing of their impious oaths, stop to consider the sons of Vulcan confined to these forges and furnaces. Is their lot much preferable? A sultry air and clouds of smoke and dust are the elements in which they labour. The confused noise of water falling, steam hissing, fire-engines working, wheels turning, files creaking, hammers beating, ore bursting, and bellows roaring, form the dismal concert that strikes the ears; while a continual eruption of flames, ascending from the mouth of their artificial volcanoes, dazzle their eyes with a horrible glare. Massy bars of hot iron are the heavy tools they handle, cylinders of the first magnitude the enormous weights they heave, vessels full of melted metal the dangerous loads they carry, streams of the same burning fluid the fiery rivers which they conduct into the deep cavities of their subterraneous moulds, and millions of flying sparks with a thousand drops of liquid, hissing iron, the horrible showers to which they are exposed. See them cast: you would think them in a bath and not in a furnace; they bedew the burning sand with their streaming sweat; nor are their wet garments dried up, either by the fierce fires they attend, or the fiery streams which they manage. Certainly, of all men, these have best reason to remember the just sentence of an offended God: ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread all the days of thy life.’” This long extract is given, not as a specimen of Fletcher’s style of writing, for it is hardly that, but as a truthful description of a large number of the poor creatures of whom he had the pastoral oversight. Many a passage of the highest kind of eloquence might be cited; but the reader is recommended to buy and peruse the book himself. The following is presented, solely because it refers to growing evils, alarmingly prevalent among people who think themselves religious:— “But all are not employed in sin and wickedness, for many go through a constant round of _innocent diversions_; and these, at least, must be _innocent_ and _happy_. Let us then consider the amusements of mankind, and see how far _our own_ pleasures demonstrate our _innocence_ and _happiness_. “How excessively foolish are the plays of children! How full of mischief and cruelty the sports of boys! How vain, foppish, and frothy the joys of young people! And how much below the dignity of upright, pure creatures, the snares that persons of different sexes lay for each other! When they are together, is not this their favourite amusement, till they are deservedly caught in the net which they imprudently spread? But see them asunder.