9^ 



STUDIES OF NATURE. 



And firft, the Nobility, having preferved a 

 part of their privileges, in the country ; trades- 

 people polTelTed of fome fortune, do not chafe to 

 live there, for fear of being expofed, on the one 

 hand, to infult, and of being confounded, on the 

 other, with the peafantry, by paying tallage and 

 drawing for the militia. They hke better to live 

 in fmall cities, where a multitude of financial em- 

 ployments and revenues enable them to fubfift in 

 indolence and liftleffhefs, rather than to vivify the 

 fields which degrade their cultivators. Hence it 

 comes to pafs, that fmall landed eftates fink in 

 value, and are year after year falling into the 

 hands of the great proprietors. The rich, who 

 make the purchafes of them, parry the inconveni- 

 enciçs to which they are fubjed, either by their 



I fhall here produce a few inftances of the effeft of venaiity in 

 the lower orders of Society. All the fubaltern conditions which 

 naturally rank under others, of right, are become the fuperiors, 

 in faft, merely becaufe they are the richer. Accordingly, it is the 

 Apothecary, now-a-days, who has the employing of the Phyfi- 

 cian ; the Attorney of the Advocate ; the Handicraft of the Mer- 

 chant ; the Mafter-mafon of the Architeél ; the Bookfeller of 

 the Scholar, even thofe of the Academy ; the Chair-hirer in 



Church, of the Preacher, &c. 1 fhall fay no more. It is 



eafy to fee to what all this leads. From tins venality alone mud 

 enfue the decline of all talents. It is, in faft, abundantly per- 

 ceptible, on comparing thofe of the age in which we live, with 

 thofe of the age of Louis XIV. 



perfonal 



