ceiued such degree as they
have vouchsafed, rather of their fauour than my desert, to yeeld and
bestow vpon me."

Of his chapter on "Degrees of the People of England" the most interesting
parts to me are those on the evil of sending young Englishmen to Italy;
the anticipation of the modern J. S. Mill & Cooperative doctrine of the
evil of too many middlemen in trade (the argument will cover distributors
as well as importers), and lawyers in business; the improvement in the
condition of yeomen; the often complaind-of evil[40] of "our great swarmes
of idle seruing men;" and our husbandmen and artificers never being better
tradesmen, tho' they sometimes scamp their work.

Harrison's chapter "Of the Food and Diet of the English" is very
interesting, with its accounts of the dinners of the nobility "whose
cookes are, for the most part, musicall-headed Frenchmen and strangers,"
and who eat "delicates wherein the sweette hand of the seafaring
Portingale is not wanting." Then it notices the rage for Venice glass
among all classes--as Falstaff says, A.D. 1598, in _2 Hen. IV._, II. i.
154, "Glasses, glasses, is the only drinking." This is followd by capital
accounts of the diet of the gentlemen and merchants, and the artificers;
the bread[41] and drink of all classes; and how Mrs. Wm. Harrison brewd
the family beer, "and hereof we make three hoggesheads of good beere, such
(I meane) as is meet for poore men as I am, to liue withall, whose small
maintenance (for what great thing is fortie pounds a yeare, _Computatis
computandis_, able to performe?) may indure no deeper cut;" with touches
like _Theologicum_ being the best wine of old, because "the merchant would
haue thought that his soule should have gone streightwaie to the diuell,
if he should haue serued them [the monks] with other than the best;" and
this kindly opinion of working-men, for which one can't help liking the
old parson[42]:--

"To conclude, both the artificer and the husbandman are sufficientlie
liberall, & verie freendlie at their tables; and when they meet, they
are so merie without malice, and plaine without inward Italian or
French craft and subtiltie, that it would doo a man good to be in
companie among them.... This is moreouer to be added in these
meetings, that if they happen to stumble vpon a peece of venison, and
a cup of wine or verie strong beere or ale ... they thinke their
cheere so great, and themselues to ha