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 encouraged to ruin themselves and say nothing about it.

One sign of this restlessness was the extraordinary vogue of shows containing monstrosities or prodigies. A dancing horse, trained by a Scot called Banks, was long one of the great sights of London, and was celebrated by Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. Bulls with five legs or two tails, hares that could play the drum, tight-rope dancing,

a strange outlandish fowl, A quaint baboon, an ape, an owl,

were objects of universal interest. Those who would "not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar would lay out ten to see a dead Indian". With this was combined a delight in savage pastimes, bull-baiting and bear-baiting. The bulls or bears were fastened to a chain and worried by bulldogs, which were often killed. Still more brutal was the whipping of a blinded bear, which strove to seize its persecutors. To the same love of excitement and distaste for honest work is due the great amount of gambling which prevailed in every class of society.

This unwholesome state of feeling afforded ample opportunity to adventurers. The ruffian,

Full of strange oaths and bearded like a pard,

swaggered at the taverns and fed the credulity of his hearers with travellers' tales:

When we were boys Who would believe that there were mountaineers Dewlapped like bulls, whose throats had hanging at them Wallets of flesh? or that there were such men