hieroglyphic of a tender love and affection to the commonwealth. If a
prince should look upon this portraiture, and draw a comparison between
that and himself, certainly he would be ashamed of his ensigns of
majesty, and be afraid of being laughed out of them.

[Illustration: His Majesty 302]

Next to kings themselves may come their courtiers, who, though they
are for the most part a base, servile, cringing, low-spirited sort of
flatterers, yet they look big, swell great, and have high thoughts of
their honour and grandeur. Their confidence appears upon all occasions;
yet in this one thing they are very modest, in that they are content to
adorn their bodies with gold, jewels, purple, and other glorious ensigns
of virtue and wisdom, but leave their minds empty and unfraught; and
taking the resemblance of goodness to themselves, turn over the truth
and reality of it to others. They think themselves mighty happy in that
they can call the king master, and be allowed the familiarity of talking
with him; that they can volubly rehearse his several tides of august
highness, supereminent excellence, and most serene majesty, that they
can boldly usher in any discourse, and that they have the complete knack
of insinuation and flattery; for these are the arts that make them truly
genteel and noble. If you make a stricter enquiry after their other
endowments, you shall find them mere sots and dolts. They will sleep
generally till noon, and then their mercenary chaplains shall come to
their bed-side, and entertain them perhaps with a short morning prayer.
As soon as they are drest they must go to breakfast, and when that
is done, immediately to dinner. When the cloth is taken away, then to
cards, dice, tables, or some such like diversion. After this they must
have one or two afternoon banquets, and so in the evening to supper.
When they have supped then begins the game of drinking; the bottles are
marshalled, the glasses ranked, and round go the healths and bumpers
till they are carried to bed. And this is the constant method of passing
away their hours, days, months, years, and ages. I have many times took
great satisfaction by standing in the court, and seeing how the tawdry
butterflies vie upon one another: the ladies shall measure the height of
their humours by the length of their trails, which must be borne up by a
page behind. The nobles justle one another to get nearest to the king's
elbow, and wear gold chains of that weight