gold, they will not scruple to imbrewe their
hands" (on the sheep and lamb, or over-shoes,
over-boots principle, I presume) " in the blood
of their own parents and friends most unnaturally."
See what wonders civilisation
has done in our time. In one respect, at
least, we are superior to Stubbes. No grocers,
tea-dealers, bakers, go about in our peaceful
London streets, with their shirt-sleeves tucked
up and butchers' knives in their hands, crying
"Kill! kill! " to the great terror of their relations
and acquaintances. No marchauntman
murders now with sword or dagger, pistol or
bludgeon. He murders in his Marting.
He poisons the bowl. He puts grave-worms
into the sugar-basin and aqua tofana into
the pickle-jar, and makes the wheaten loaf a
Golgotha. He gathers his tea-leaves in the
Valley of the Shadow of Death, and sounds
the death-trump in the blown-out vesicles of
Nice White Veal, and tells cocoa that it is clay,
and coffee that it is dust and ashes. And the
higher marchauntmau, the merchant prince,
the titled banker, he never murders now for
silver or gold. Oh no! He never embrewes
his hands in the blood of parents and friends
most unnaturally. Oh dear no! He is
contented with failing in a genteel, fashionable
way, and killing widows and orphans and
young children by the slow but sure process
of ruin and misery and despair. No butcher's
knife, or chopper, or pole-axe, no uprolled
shirt-sleeves for your merchant-prince or
titled banker; but kills genteelly, murders
his victim "as though he loved him," like
that nobleman-executioner of the ancient
regime, who, in the royalist reaction that
in some provinces of France followed the
Reign of Terror, condescended himself to
massacre some Jacobin prisoners; but, tuait
avec sa canne à pomme d'or, killed them
with his gold-headed cane.

Can no good come out of England.—
Are we so irredeemably bad that Stubbes
must be down on us continually. Is
Stubbes merely an inveterate old grumbler,
croaker, misanthrope, mysogynist, and world-hater,
or are we as drefful wicked as
Topsy! Flying off at a tangent of indignation
from covetousness and greed of wealth,
he is furious against the assumption of
titles. " The world is such," he says, " that
he who hath much money enough shall be
Rabbied and Maistered at every word, and
withal saluted by the vain title of worshipful,
though notwithstanding he be a muck-heap
gentleman. And to such extreme madness
is it grown, that now-a-days every butcher,
shoemaker, tailor, cobbler, and husbandman,
nay, every tinker, pedler, and swineherd,
every artificer, and other gregarii ordinis, of
the vilest sort of men that be, must be called
by the value name of maisters at every
word."

But this is but a transient puff, a trifling
cap full of wind of Stubbes' anger. Soon
the full current of his wrath is directed
against the monster vice and corruption of
the age—usury. He tells us plainly that
money-lending at interest is murder. " The
usurer killeth not one, but many; both house-band,
wife, children, servants, family, and all,
not sparing any. And if the poor man have
not wherewith to pay, as well as the interest,
then suit is commenced against him, outgo
butterflies (?) and writs as thick as hail. So
the poor man is apprehended, and being once
convented, judgment condemnatory and definitive
is pronounced against him, and then to
Bocardo (the Fleet?) goeth he as round as a
ball, where he is sure to lie until he rot one
piece from another without satisfaction be.
made. O cursed caitiff! no man, but a devil;
no Christian, but a cruel Tartarian, and merciless
Turk . . . ." but I cannot follow Stubbes
any further; for he goes on pitching into
the usurers for four closely-printed twelvemo
pages of black letter.

Hear Stubbes on the abuses of Sunday,
and I will shut him up for good. Come hither
and listen to Stubbes, you Mawworms, Cantwells,
Tartuffes, and over-righteous hypocrites
of every grade and sect. Come hither Sir
Joseph Surface, Bart., Lord Thomas Blifil,
and Lord Viscount Sheepington (the family
name is Wolf). Come hither all you

          Whose chief devotion lies
     In odd, perverse, antipathies;
     That with more care keep holyday .
     The wrong than others the right way;
     Still so perverse and opposite
     As if they worshipp'd God for spite.

Listen all you who see crime in a Sunday pint
of beer, perdition in a Sunday newspaper,
ruin in a Sunday cigar, and destruction in
a Sunday razor-strop; who think the Sabbath
desecrated now, listen to how it was
desecrated in the auriferous age and pious
times of Queen Elizabeth.

"Some spend the Sabaoth day," says ancient
Stubbes, " in frequenting wicked plays
and interludes, in maintaining Lords of Misrule
(for so they call a certain kind of play
which they use), in May games, church ales,
feasts, and wakesesses. In piping, dancing,
dicing, carding, bowling, and tennis-playing.
In bear-baiting, cock-fighting, hawking, and
hunting. In keeping of fairs and markets on
the Sabaoth. In keeping of court-leet, in
football playing, and such-like devilish pastimes.
In reading wicked books, in fencing
and playing at staves and cudgels."

  Now ready, price 5s. 6d., neatly bound in cloth,
             THE ELEVENTH VOLUME
                            OF
               HOUSEHOLD WORDS
Containing the Numbers Issued between the 3rd of
February and the 28th July, 1855. The Library Edition
of the previous Ten Volumes (bound in five) of
HOUSEHOLD WORDS with an index to the whole, price
£2 10s., may always be had of the booksellers.