u; I know you were
talking of my husband, because my nose itches.

_Beam._ Faith, madam, I was speaking in favour of your nation: What
pleasant lives I have known Spaniards to live in England.

_Jul._ If you love me, let me hear a little.

_Beam._ We observed them to have much of the nature of our flies; they
buzzed abroad a month or two in the summer, would venture about
dog-days to take the air in the Park, but all the winter slept like
dormice; and, if they ever appeared in public after Michaelmas, their
faces shewed the difference betwixt their country and ours, for they
look in Spain as if they were roasted, and in England as if they were
sodden.

_Jul._ I'll not believe your description.

_Fisc._ Yet our observations of them in Holland are not much unlike
it. I've known a great Don at the Hague, with the gentleman of his
horse, his major domo, and two secretaries, all dine at four tables,
on the quarters of a single pullet: The victuals of the under servants
were weighed out in ounces, by the Don himself; with so much garlic in
the other scale: A thin slice of bacon went through the family a week
together; for it was daily put into the pot for pottage; was served in
the midst of the dish at dinners, and taken out and weighed by the
steward, at the end of every meal, to see how much it lost; till, at
length, looking at it against the sun, it appeared transparent, and
then he would have whipped it up, as his own fees, at a morsel; but
that his lord barred the dice, and reckoned it to him for a part of
his board wages.

_Beam._ In few words, madam, the general notion we had of them, was,
that they were very frugal of their Spanish coin, and very liberal of
their Neapolitan.

_Jul._ I see, gentlemen, you are in the way of rallying; therefore let
me be no hinderance to your sport; do as much for one another as you
have done for our nation. Pray, Mynheer Fiscal, what think you of the
English?

_Fisc._ Oh, I have an honour for the country.

_Beam._ I beseech you, leave your ceremony; we can hear of our faults
without choler; therefore speak of us with a true Amsterdam spirit,
and do not spare us.

_Fisc._ Since you command me, sir, 'tis said of you, I know not how
truly, that for your fishery at home, you're like dogs in the manger,
you will neither manage it yourselves, nor permit your neighbours; so
that for your sovereignty of the narrow seas, if the inhabitants of
them, the herrings, were capable of bei