Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/633

] refined and humane spectacle, were the favourite diversions of a large part of the town. Multitudes assembled to see gladiators hack each other to pieces with deadly weapons, and shouted with delight when one of the combatants lost a finger or an eye. The prisons were hells on earth—seminaries of every crime and every disease. At the assizes, the lean and yellow culprits brought with them from their cells to the dock an atmosphere of stench and pestilence which sometimes avenged them signally on the bench, bar, and jury. But on all this misery society looked with profound indifference."

The Hall of an old English squire.

But we shall soon find that this conclusion is, on the whole, too sweeping. Even that age had its philanthropists, and we may cite the brutal crowds who still flock to witness the agonies of a hanging man to reduce in some degree the wide distance betwixt the mobs of this age and that. But, as it concerns the condition of the people, the important difference is that the humanity which has now pervaded the upper anf middle classes of our time was scarcely to be recognised then. The poor were treated with little tenderness. Though four-fifths of the working people were engaged in agriculture, agriculture was then extended over a wonderfully small portion of the country. There was a surplus of hands, and these, therefore, were poorly pail, whilst their clothing and provisions were comparatively high. Not more than half the area of the island was then, it is supposed, in cultivation, and the tillage was rude and slovenly. The rate of wages for agricultural labourers, wood-cutters, shepherds, and the like, differed in different parts of the country, but in the best it did not average more than four shillings a week with food, or six shillings without. In Essex, in 1661, the magistrates of Essex fixed the rate of wages from March to September at eightpence a day with food, and one shilling and twopence without; and for the other months, sixpence with food, and a shilling without Women had, of course, less. In most counties a similar scale was fixed by the magistrates; and an act of Elizabeth empowered them to punish whoever gave more or less, and