derable part of your estate in your own hands. And this you may do without any disparagement, for the life of a husbandman is not unseemly for any of the children of Adam, or Noah who began it; and although that employment requires attendance and industry, as well as knowledge and experience, yet it will afford a man competent time for such other studies and employments as may become a scholar or a gentleman, a good patriot or justice in his country.

Though all callings and employments carry with them a gratefulness and contenting variety much more than idleness and intemperance, or debauchery, yet in whatsoever calling you are settled, though that calling must be your principal business, and such as you must principally apply yourselves unto, yet I thought it always necessary to have some innocent diversions for leisure times; because it takes off the tediousness of business, and prevents a worse mispending of the time. I therefore commend to those gentlemen, of what profession soever, that they spend their spare and leisure hours in reading of history or mathematics, in experimental philosophy, in searching out the kinds and natures of trees and plants, herbs, flowers, and other

vegetables; nay in observing of insects, in mathematical observations, in measuring land, nay in the more cleanly exercise of smithery, watch-making, carpentry, joinery works of all sorts. These and the like innocent diversions give these advantages: 1. they improve a man's knowledge and understanding; 2. they render him fit for many employments of use; 3. they take off the tediousness of one employment; 4. they prevent diversions of worse kinds, as going to taverns, or games, and the like; 5. they rob no time from your constant calling, but only spend with usefulness and delight that time that can be well spared.

CHAPTER XVI.

Concerning the Employment of Young Gen

tlewomen.

IN former times the education and employment of young gentlewomen was religious, sober, and serious, their carriage modest, and creditable was their habit and dress. When they were young they learned to read and to sew; as they grew up they learned to spin, to knit, to make up their own garments; they learned what belonged to housewifery, the prices of provisions, and how they were to be ordered, and thought it no disparagement to put their hands to the business of the dairy, or sorting of wool, to look to the stores and provisions of their parent's house, and to order them to the best advantage; to know what belonged to brewing and baking, and winnowing, and to see corn well ordered in the barn, in the moulting, and in the cistern,

And by this means, when they came to be disposed of in marriage, they were in themselves a portion whether they had little or much, and could provide for and govern a family with pru

dence and discretion, and were great helps to their husbands, and knew how to build up a family, and accordingly were instruments in it, and not to pull it down; such was the woman described and commended by a queen, Prov. iii. 10, and the following verses.

And now the world is altered: young gentlewomen learn to be bold, talk loud and more than comes to their share, think it disparagement for them to know what belongs to good housewifery, or to practise it, make it their business to paint or patch their faces, to curl their loeks, and to find out the newest and costliest fashions. If they rise in the morning before ten of the clock, the morning is spent between the comb, and the glass, and the box of patches; though they know not how to make provision for it themselves, they must have choice diet provided for them, and when they are ready, the next business is to come down, and sit in a rubbed parlour till dinner come in; and, after dinner, either to cards or to the exchange, or to the play, or to Hyde Park, or to an impertinent visit; and after supper, either to a ball or to cards; and at this rate they spend their time, from one end of the year to the other; and at the same rate they spend their parent's or husband's

money or estates in costly clothes, new fashions, chargeable entertainments: their home is their prison, and they are never at rest in it, unless they have gallants and splendid company to entertain. They know the ready way to consume an estate, and to ruin a family quickly; but neither know nor can endure to learn or practise the ways and methods to save it or increase it: and it is no wonder that great portions are expected with them, for their portions are commonly all their value, and commonly within a few years, nay, possibly a few months, they run their husbands into debt, or spend as much money as their portions come to; and then they are a sort of chargeable unprofitable people, they neither know how to housewife or manage what is left unspent; nor to live within the compass of it. If a fit of reading come upon them, it is some romance, or play-book, or love story; and if they have at any time a fit of using their needle, it is some such unprofitable or costly work that spends their friends or husbands more than it is worth when it is finished.

But my grandaughters, I must neither have you idle, nor employed in this manner; for though I intend to provide competent portions for you, if God bless me and you, yet I intend not