tunity, and Freedom of Observations. Their Hospitality, and familiar Way of conversing with their Neighbourhood will always supply them with Intelligence. The Leisure which their Retirements afford them, is so great, that either they must spend their Thoughts about such Attempts, or in more chargeable and less innocent Divertisements. If they will consider the Heavens and the Motions of the Stars, they have there a quieter Hemisphere, and a clearer Air for that Purpose. If they will observe the Generations, Breedings, Diseases, and Cures of living Creatures; their Stables, their Stalls, their Kennels, their Parks, their Ponds, will give them eternal Matter of Inquiry. If they would satisfy their Minds with the advancing of Fruits, the beautifying, the ripening, the bettering of Plants; their Pastures, their Orchards, their Groves, their Gardens, their Nurseries, will furnish them with perpetual Contemplations. They may not only make their Business, but their very Sports most serviceable to Experimental Knowledge. For that if it be rightly educated, will stand in need of such Recreations as much as the Gentlemen themselves, from their hunting, hawking, fishing, and fowling, that is able to receive as much solid Profit as they Delight.
On both these Accounts the English Gentry has the Advantage of those of France, Spain, Italy, or Germany; who are generally either shut up in Towns, and dream away their Lives in the Diversions of Cities; or else are engag'd to follow their Princes Wills to foreign Wars.
Nor do they only excel other Nations in such Opportunities, but our own Nobility of all former Times. First, they are now far more numerous, and so more may be spar'd from the civil Business of their Coun-
