r of the house, so it was
reputed a far better medicine to keep the goodman and his family from the
quake or pose, wherewith as then very few were oft acquainted.

Of the curiousness of these piles I speak not, sith our workmen are grown
generally to such an excellency of device in the frames now made that they
far pass the finest of the old. And, such is their husbandry in dealing
with their timber, that the same stuff which in time past was rejected as
crooked, unprofitable, and of no use but the fire doth now come in the
fronts and best part of the work. Whereby the common saying is likewise in
these days verified in our mansion houses, which erst was said only of the
timber for ships, that "no oak can grow so crooked but it falleth out to
some use," and that necessary in the navy. It is a world to see, moreover,
how divers men being bent to building, and having a delectable vein in
spending of their goods by that trade, do daily imagine new devices of
their own, to guide their workmen withal, and those more curious and
excellent always than the former. In the proceeding also of their works,
how they set up, how they pull down, how they enlarge, how they restrain,
how they add to, how they take from, whereby their heads are never idle,
their purses never shut, nor their books of account never made perfect.

"_Destruunt, aedificant, mutant quadrata rotundis_,"

saith the poet. So that, if a man should well consider of all the odd
crotchets in such a builder's brain, he would think his head to have even
enough of those affairs only, and therefore judge that he would not well
be able to deal in any other. But such commonly are our work-masters that
they have beside this vein aforementioned either great charge of
merchandises, little less business in the commonwealth, or, finally, no
small dealings otherwise incident unto them, whereby gain ariseth, and
some trouble oft among withal. Which causeth me to wonder not a little how
they can play the parts so well of so many sundry men, whereas divers
other, of greater forecast in appearance, can seldom shift well or thrive
in any one of them. But to our purpose.

We have many woods, forests, and parks, which cherish trees abundantly,
although in the woodland countries there is almost no hedge that hath not
some store of the greatest sort, beside infinite numbers of hedgerows,
groves, and springs, that are maintained of purpose for the building and
provision of such own