PART I. 



TOR A COUNTRY RESIDENCE. 



667 



take place at, and shortly after returning from, bathing-places. 

 In the self-practice of medicine, perhaps, more than in any 

 other science, mankind are blindly led by those who are no less 

 truly blind themselves*. 



2. Profit is the next object that may induce some to retire 

 to the country. They should choose a farm, either near or dis- 

 tant from the metropolis, according to the manner in which 

 they mean to turn it to profit; whether alone, in which case 

 they should generally move to some considerable distance from 

 town; or in connection with some other art or profession, or 

 some particular mode of disposing of produce, and in such cases 

 they should remain as near it as possible. 



* Were it not interfering with the province of the divine and the physician, I 

 should ask, whether the fashionable custom of attending bathing-places be more 

 injurious to the health or the morals of the middle ranks of society ? If my obser- 

 vations be not correct, they injure no one; if they are just, (and it is for those inte- 

 rested to prove them not so) I hope they will not be without their effect. It cannot 

 however be controverted, that the frequency of indiscriminate bathings, often within 

 either the view or the hearing of different sexes, has contributed gradually to un- 

 dermine the ramparts of public decorum, has given existence to a general laxity of 

 principle approaching impurity of mind and sentiment, and has left us too much 

 reason to fear that not only modesty, but chastity, have suffered by our continental 

 neighbours; and that the disgraceful manners of the reign of Charles II. also im- 

 ported from France, are about to be revived ! The attentive observer of men and 

 manners, and the real patriot, will see much to lament in such practices ; as he well 

 knows, that dissolute manners are always the forerunner of those horrors which at- 

 tend the subversion of religion, laws, liberty, and perhaps even our enviable con- 

 stitution. 



