This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1870 Excerpt: ... lately herein, I refer to every particular man's own knowledge. I fear it will be verified, which an old Gentleman said, when our posterity shall see our pictures, they shall think we were foolishly proud in apparel, as when they shall see our contracts, purchases, deeds, covenants and conveyances, they will think we have been exceeding crafty, as we judge the contrary by the pictures and deeds of our Ancestours whom we commend for plainness both in meaning and attire, though in some Ages they offended in the latter as well as we. To what cause our mutability (whereas our Cosins the Germans have been immutable herein) may be referred, I know not, unless that we, as all Islanders, are Lunaries, or the Moon's men, who, as it is in the old Epigram, could be fitted with no apparel, as her mother answered her, when she intreated nothing more. They which mislike most our present vanity herein, let them remember that of Tacitus: All things run round, and as the seasons of the year, so men's manners have their revolutions. But nothing maketh more to this purpose than that of Seneca: Our Age is not only faulty, our Ancestours have complained, we complain, and our Posterity will complain, that manners are corrupted, that naughtiness reigneth, and all things wax worse and worse. But those things do stay and shall stay, only tossed a little to and fro, even as the billows of the Sea. In one Age there will be more adulterers; in another time there will be excessive riot in banquetting; another while strange garmenting of the body not without deformity of the mind. At another time, malapert boldness will square it out; In another Age, cruelty, and fury of civil war will flash out; and sometimes carowsing and drunkenness will be counted a bravery. So vices do ruffle among...