666" THE CHOICE OF A SITUATION BOOK III, 



some of those objects or intentions which are most prevalent 

 among citizens and wealthy gentlemen. 



1. Health. The lowest object that any citizen can have in 

 view, in wishing a country-house, is to promote the health of 

 his family. This is commonly done; and few evils in regard 

 to taste result from misunderstanding either in the physician or 

 the merchant himself. I shall only remark, that if besides a 

 mere house, a small garden were always procured, or formed, an 

 hour or two of labour in it every day, whether to ladies or gen- 

 tlemen, (for there is employment in a garden suited to every sex 

 and age, from the tying up of flowers, hoeing, pulling weeds, &c. 

 to digging or trenching) would tend much more to their health 

 than the pernicious custom of sea-bathing; a practice which 

 when often used, is, independent of the dangerous influence to 

 morals from herding together at watering places, so strikingly 

 unnatural, so seldom performed by other land animals/ and so 

 pernicious to vegetables*, that it is astonishing it does not 

 strike every one accustomed to reflect on the deaths which 



* In this I do not allude to vegetables which grow in our atmosphere, where the 

 temperature of the water and the vegetables are the same ; in that case, it would do 

 no harm to man ; and if higher than the medium of his temperature, or if his tem- 

 perature were too high, bathing would do good ; but I refer to plants in hothouses 

 being often drenched with cold water, which always brings on an incurable anasarca, 

 a tabes, or general debility. 



