sixteen years' purchase will yield six in the hun- | fitter for new projects than for settled business; for

:

dred, and somewhat more, whereas this rate of in- the experience of age, in things that fall within the terest yields but five this by like reason will compass of it, directeth them: but in new things encourage and edge industrious and profitable im- abuseth them. The errors of young men are the provements, because many will rather venture in ruin of business; but the errors of aged men that kind, than take five in the hundred, especially amount but to this, that more might have been having been used to greater profit. Secondly, let done, or sooner. Young men, in the conduct there be certain persons licensed to lend to known and manage of actions, embrace more than they merchants upon usury, at a high rate, and let it be can hold; stir more than they can quiet; fly to with the cautions following: let the rate be even the end, without consideration of the means and with the merchant himself, somewhat more easy degrees; pursue some few principles which they than that he used formerly to pay; for by that means have chanced upon absurdly; care not to innovate, all borrowers shall have some ease by this refor- which draws unknown inconveniences; use exmation, be he merchant, or whosoever; let it be treme remedies at first; and that, which doubleth no bank, or common stock, but every man be mas- all errors, will not acknowledge or retract them, ter of his own money; not that I altogether dislike like an unruly horse, that will neither stop nor! banks, but they will hardly be brooked, in regard turn. Men of age object too much, consult too | of certain suspicions. Let the state be answered some small matter for the license, and the rest left to the lender; for if the abatement be but small, it will no whit discourage the lender; for he, for example, that took before, ten or nine in the hundred, will sooner descend to eight in the hundred than give over his trade of usury, and go from certain gains to gains of hazard. Let these licensed lenders be in number indefinite, but restrained to certain principal cities and towns of merchandising; for then they will be hardly able to colour other men's moneys in the country; so as the license of nine will not suck away the current rate of five; for no man will lend his moneys far off, nor put them into unknown hands.

If it be objected that this doth in a sort authorize usury, which before was in some places but permissive; the answer is, that it is better to mitigate usury by declaration than to suffer it to rage by connivance.

XLII. OF YOUTH AND AGE.

long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success. Certainly it is good to compound employments of both; for that will be good for the present, because the virtues of either age may correct the defects of both; and good for succession, that young men may be learners, while men in age are actors; and, lastly, good for external accidents, because authority followeth old men, and favour and popularity youth; but, for the moral part, perhaps, youth will have the pre-eminence, as age hath for the politic. A certain rabbin upon the text, "Your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams," inferreth that young men are admitted nearer to God than old, because vision is a clearer revelation than a dream : and, certainly, the more a man drinketh of the world, the more it intoxicateth and age doth profit rather in the powers of understanding, than in the virtues of the will and affections. There be some have an over-early ripeness in their years, which fadeth betimes these are, first, such as have brittle wits, the edge whereof is soon turned: such as was Hermogenes the rhetorician, whose books are exceeding subtle, who afterwards waxed stupid; a second sort is of those that have some natural dispositions, which have better grace in youth than in age; such as is a fluent and luxuriant speech; which becomes youth well, but not age; so Tully saith of Hortensius, "Idem manebat, neque neque`idem decebat ;" the third is of such as take too high a strain at the first, and are magnanimous more than tract of years can uphold; as with Scipio Africanus, of whom Livy saith in effect, " Ultima primis cedebant."

A MAN that is young in years may be old in hours, if he have lost no time; but that happeneth rarely. Generally, youth is like the first cogitations, not so wise as the second: for there is a youth in thoughts as well as in ages; and yet the invention of young men is more lively than that of old, and imaginations stream into their minds better, and, as it were, more divinely. Natures that have much heat, and great and violent desires and perturbations, are not ripe for action till they have passed the meridian of their years: as it was with Julius Cæsar and Septimius Severus; of the latter of whom it is said, "juventutem egit, erroribus, imo furoribus plenam ;" and yet he was the ablest emperor, almost, of all the list: but reposed natures may do well in youth, as it is seen in Augustus Cæsar, Cosmus Duke of Florence, Gaston VIRTUE is like a rich stone, best plain set; and de Foix, and others. On the other side, heat and surely virtue is best in a body that is comely, vivacity in age is an excellent composition for though not of delicate features; and that hath business. Young men are fitter to invent, than to rather dignity of presence, than beauty of aspect; judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and | neither is it almost seen, that very beautiful per

XLIII. OF BEAUTY.

sons are otherwise of great virtue; as if nature and deliver himself from scorn; therefore, all dewere rather busy not to err, than in labour to pro- formed persons are extreme bold; first, as in their duce excellency; and therefore they prove accom- own defence, as being exposed to scorn, but in plished, but not of great spirit; and study rather process of time by a general habit. Also it stirbehaviour, than virtue. But this holds not al- reth in them industry, and especially of this ways: for Augustus Cæsar, Titus Vespasianus, kind, to watch and observe the weakness of Philip le Belle of France, Edward the Fourth of others, that they may have somewhat to repay. England, Alcibiades of Athens, Ismael, the sophy | Again, in their superiors, it quencheth jealousy of Persia, were all high and great spirits, and yet towards them, as persons that they think they the most beautiful men of their times. In beauty, may at pleasure despise: and it layeth their comthat of favour, is more than that of colour; and petitors and emulators asleep, as never believing that of decent and gracious motion, more than they should be in possibility of advancement till that of favour. That is the best part of beauty, they see them in possession: so that upon the which a picture cannot express; no, nor the first matter, in a great wit, deformity is an advantage sight of the life. There is no excellent beauty to rising. Kings, in ancient times, (and at this that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. present in some countries,) were wont to put great A man cannot tell whether Apelles or Albert trust in eunuchs, because they that are envious Durer were the more trifler; whereof the one towards all are more obnoxious and officious would make a personage by geometrical propor- towards one; but yet their trust towards them tions: the other by taking the best parts out of hath rather been as to good spials, and good divers faces, to make one excellent. Such per- whisperers, than good magistrates and officers: sonages, I think, would please nobody but the and much like is the reason of deformed persons. painter that made them: not but I think a painter Still the ground is, they will, if they be of spirit, may make a better face than ever was; but he seek to free themselves from scorn; which must must do it by a kind of felicity, (as a musician be either by virtue or malice; and, therefore, let that maketh an excellent air in music,) and not by it not be marvelled, if sometimes they prove exrule. A man shall see faces, that, if you exa-cellent persons; as was Agesilaus, Zanger the mine them part by part, you shall find never a good; and yet altogether do well. If it be true, that the principal part of beauty, is in decent motion, certainly it is no marvel, though persons in years seem many times more amiable; "pulchrorum autumnus pulcher;" for no youth can be comely but by pardon, and considering the youth as to make up the comeliness. Beauty is as summer fruits, which are easy to corrupt, and cannot last; and, for the most part, it makes a dissolute youth, and an age a little out of countenance; but yet certainly again, if it light well, it maketh virtues shine, and vices blush.

son of Solyman, Æsop, Gasca, president of Peru; and Socrates may go likewise amongst them, with others.

XLV. OF BUILDING.

HOUSES are built to live in, and not to look on; therefore let use be preferred before uniformity, except where both may be had. Leave the goodly fabrics of houses, for beauty only, to the enchanted palaces of the poets, who build them with small cost. He that builds a fair house upon an ill seat, committeth himself to prison: neither do I reckon it an ill seat only where the air is unwholesome, but likewise where the air is unequal; as you shall see many fine seats set XLIV. OF DEFORMITY. upon a knap of ground, environed with higher hills DEFORMED persons are commonly even with round about it, whereby the heat of the sun is pent nature; for as nature hath done ill by them, so in, and the wind gathereth as in troughs; so as do they by nature, being, for the most part, (as you shall have, and that suddenly, as great diverthe Scripture saith,) "void of natural affection;"sity of heat and cold as if you dwelt in several and so they have their revenge of natures. Cer-places. Neither is it ill air only that maketh an tainly there is a consent between the body and the mind, and where nature erreth in the one, she ventureth in the other: "ubi peccat in uno, periclitatur in altero:" but because there is in man an election, touching the frame of his mind, and a necessity in the frame of his body, the stars of natural inclination are sometimes obscured by the sun of discipline and virtue; therefore it is good to consider of deformity, not as a sign which is more deceivable, but as a cause which seldom faileth of the effect. Whosoever hath any thing fixed in his person that doth induce contempt, hath also a perpetual spur in himself to rescue VOL. I.-7

ill seat: but ill ways, ill markets; and, if you will consult with Momus, ill neighbours. I speak not of many more; want of water, want of wood, shade, and shelter, want of fruitfulness, and mixture of grounds of several natures; want of prospect, want of level grounds, want of places at some near distance for sports of hunting, hawking, and races; too near the sea, too remote; having the commodity of navigable rivers, or the discommodity of their overflowing: too far off from great cities, which may hinder business; or too near them, which lurcheth all provisions, and maketn every thing dear; where a man hath a great liv`rg

E

upon. In the upper gallery, too, I wish that there [ satyrian, with the white flower; herba muscaria, may be, if the place will yield it, some fountains running in divers places from the wall, with some fine avoidances. And thus much for the model of the palace; save that you must have, before you come to the front, three courts; a green court plain, with a wall about it; a second court of the same, but more garnished with little turrets, or rather embellishments, upon the wall; and a third court, to make a square with the front, but not to be built, nor yet enclosed with a naked wall, but enclosed with terraces leaded aloft, and fairly garnished on the three sides; and cloistered on the inside with pillars, and not with arches below. As for offices, let them stand at distance, with some low galleries to pass from them to the palace itself.

in season.

XLVI. OF GARDENS.

lilium convallium, the apple-tree in blossom. In July come gilliflowers of all varieties, musk-roses, the lime-tree in blossom, early pears, and plums, in fruit, genitings, codlins. In August come plums, of all sorts in fruit, pears, apricots, barberries, filberds, muskmelons, monkshoods, of all colours. In September come grapes, apples, poppies of all colours, peaches, melocotones, nectarines, cornelians, wardens, quinces. In October and the beginning of November come services, medlars, bullaces, roses cut or removed to come late, hollyoaks, and such like. These particulars are for the climate of London; but my meaning is perceived, that you may have "ver perpetuum,' as the place affords.

And because the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air (where it comes and goes, like the warbling of music) than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight, than to know what be the flowers and plants that do best perfume the air. Roses, damask and red, are fast flowers of their smells; so that you may walk by a whole row of them, and find nothing of their sweetness; yea, though it be in a morning's dew.

rosemary little, nor sweet marjoram; that which,
above all others, yields the sweetest smell in the
air, is the violet, especially the white double
violet, which comes twice a year, about the mid-
Next
dle of April, and about Bartholomew-tide.
to that is the musk-rose; then the strawberry-
leaves dying, with a most excellent cordial smell;
then the flower of the vines, it is a little dust like
the dust of a bent, which grows upon the cluster
in the first coming forth; then sweetbrier, then

GOD ALMIGHTY first planted a garden; and, indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures; it is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man; without which buildings and palaces are but gross handiworks; and a man shall ever see, that, when ages grow to civility and elegancy, men|Bays, likewise, yield no smell as they grow, come to build stately, sooner than to garden finely; as if gardening were the greater perfection. I do hold it in the royal ordering of gardens, there ought to be gardens for all the months in the year, in which, severally, things of beauty may be then For December, and January, and the latter part of November, you must take such things as are green all winter: holly, ivy, bays, juniper, cypress-trees, yew, pineapple-trees, firtrees, rosemary, lavender; periwinkle, the white, the purple, and the blue; germander, flag, orange-wallflowers, which are very delightful to be set trees, lemon-trees, and myrtles, if they be stoved; and sweet marjoram, warm set. There followeth, for the latter part of January and February, the mezereon-tree, which then blossoms; crocus vernus, both the yellow and the gray; primroses, anemones, the early tulip, the hyacinthus orientalis, chamaïris fritellaria. For March, there come violets, especially the single blue, which are the earliest; the yellow daffodil, the daisy, the almond-tree in blossom, the peach-tree in blossom, the cornelian-tree in blossom, sweetbrier. April follow the double white violet, the wallflower, the stock-gilliflower, the cowslip, flowerde-luces, and lilies of all natures; rosemary-flowers, the tulip, the double peony, the pale daffodil, the French honeysuckle, the cherry-tree in blossom, the damascene and plum-trees in blossom, the white thorn in leaf, the lilac-tree. In May and June come pinks of all sorts, especially the blush-pink; roses of all kinds, except the musk, which comes later; honeysuckles, strawberries, bugloss, columbine, the French marigold, flos Africanus, cherry-tree in fruit, ribes, figs in fruit, rasps, vine-flowers, lavender in flowers, the sweet

In

under a parlour or lower chamber window; then pinks and gilliflowers, especially the matted pink and clove gilliflower; then the flowers of the limetree; then the honeysuckles, so they be somewhat afar off. Of bean-flowers I speak not, because they are field flowers; but those which perfume the air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but being trodden upon and crushed, are three, that is, burnet, wild thyme, and watermints; therefore you are to set whole alleys of them, to have the pleasure when you walk or tread.

For gardens, (speaking of those which are, indeed, prince-like, as we have done of buildings,) the contents ought not well to be under thirty acres of ground, and to be divided into three parts; a green in the entrance, a heath, or desert, in the going forth, and the main garden in the midst, besides alleys on both sides; and, I like well, that four acres of ground be assigned to the green, six to the heath, four and four to either side, and twelve to the main garden. The green hath two pleasures; the one, because nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn: the other, because it will give you a fair alley in

that sprinkleth or spouteth water: the other a fair receipt of water, of some thirty or forty foot square, but without fish, or slime, or mud. For the first, the ornaments of images, gilt or of marble, which are in use, do well: but the main

either in the bowls or in the cistern: that the water be never by rest discoloured, green or red, or the like, or gather any mossiness or putrefaction; besides that, it is to be cleansed every day by the hand: also some steps up to it, and some fine pavement about it doth well. As for the other kind of fountain, which we may call a bathing pool, it may admit much curiosity and beauty, wherewith we will not trouble ourselves: as that the bottom be finely paved, and with images; the sides likewise; and withal embellished with coloured glass, and such things of lustre; encompassed also with fine rails of low statues: but the main point is the same which we mentioned in the former kind of fountain; which is, that the water be in perpetual motion, fed by a water higher than the pool, and delivered into it by fair spouts, and then discharged away under ground, by some equality of bores, that it stay little; and for fine devices, of arching water without spilling, and making it rise in several forms, (of feathers, drinking glasses, canopies, and the like,) they be pretty things to look on, but nothing to health and sweetness.

the midst, by which you may go in front upon a | Fountains I intend to be of two natures; the one stately hedge, which is to enclose the garden: but because the alley will be long, and, in great heat of the year, or day, you ought not to buy the shade in the garden by going in the sun through the green; therefore you are, of either side the green, to plant a covert alley, upon car-matter is so to convey the water, as it never stay, penter's work, about twelve foot in height, by which you may go in shade into the garden. As for the making of knots, or figures, with divers coloured earths, that they may lie under the windows of the house on that side which the garden stands, they be but toys: you may see as good sights many times in tarts. The garden is best to be square, encompassed on all the four sides with a stately arched hedge; the arches to be upon pillars of carpenter's work, of some ten foot high, and six foot broad, and the spaces between of the same dimension with the breadth of the arch. Over the arches let there be an entire hedge of some four foot high, framed also upon carpenter's work; and upon the upper hedge, over every arch, a little turnet, with a belly enough to receive a cage of birds: and over every space between the arches some other little figure, with broad plates of round coloured glass gilt, for the sun to play upon: but this hedge I intend to be raised upon a bank, not steep, but gently slope, of some six foot, set all with flowers. Also I understand, that this square of the garden should not be the whole breadth of the ground, but to leave on either side ground enough for diversity For the heath, which was the third part of our of side alleys, unto which the two covert alleys | plot, I wished it to be framed as much as may be of the green may deliver you; but there must be to a natural wildness. Trees I would have none no alleys with hedges at either end of this great in it, but some thickets made only of sweetbrier enclosure; not at the higher end, for letting your and honeysuckle, and some wild vine amongst; prospect upon this fair hedge from the green; nor and the ground set with violets, strawberries, and at the further end, for letting your prospect from primroses; for these are sweet, and prosper in the hedge through the arches upon the heath. the shade; and these to be in the heath here and there, not in any order. I like also little heaps, in the nature of mole hills, (such as are in wild heaths,) to be set, some with wild thyme, some with pinks, some with germander that gives a good flower to the eye; some with periwinkle, some with violets, some with strawberries, some with cowslips, some with daisies, some with red roses, some with lilium convallium, some with sweetwilliams red, some with bear's-foot, and the like low flowers, being withal sweet and sightly; part of which heaps to be with standards of little bushes pricked upon their top, and part without: the standards to be roses, juniper, holly, barberries, (but here and there, because, of the smell of their blossom,) red currants, gooseberries, rosemary, bays, sweetbrier, and such like: but these standards to be kept with cutting, that they grow not out of course.

For the ordering of the ground within the great hedge, I leave it to variety of device; advising, nevertheless, that whatsoever form you cast it into first, it be not too busy, or full of work; wherein I, for my part, do not like images cut out in juniper or other garden stuff; they be for children. Little low hedges, round like welts, with some pretty pyramids, I like well; and in some places fair columns, upon frames of carpenter's work. I would also have the alleys spacious and fair. You may have closer alleys upon the side grounds, but none in the main garden. I wish also, in the very middle, a fair mount, with three ascents and alleys, enough for four to walk abreast; which I would have to be perfect circles, without any bulwarks or embossments; and the whole mount to be thirty foot high, and some fine banquetinghouse with some chimneys neatly cast, and without too much glass.

For the side grounds, you are to fill them with For fountains, they are a great beauty and re-variety of alleys, private, to give a full shade; freshment; but pools mar all, and make the gar- some of them, wheresoever the sun be. You

den unwholesome, and full of flies and frogs. are to frame some of them likewise for shelter,