Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 8).pdf/15

 or which could be half seen through, was as bad as having no mask at all

This is the reason, may it please your reverences, that in all our numerous family, for these four generations, we count no more than one archbishop, a Welch judge, some three or four aldermen, and a single mountebank

In the sixteenth century, we boast of no less than a dozen alchymists.