court, the law, or the army, are younger brothers, or new men, whose
narrow fortunes have forced them upon industry and application.

As for the Inns of Court, unless we suppose them to be much degenerated,
they must needs be the worst instituted seminaries in any Christian
country; but whether they may be corrected without interposition of the
legislature, I have not skill enough to determine. However, it is
certain, that all wise nations have agreed in the necessity of a strict
education, which consisted, among other things, in the observance of
moral duties, especially justice, temperance, and chastity, as well as
the knowledge of arts, and bodily exercises: But all these among us are
laughed out of doors.

Without the least intention to offend the clergy, I cannot but think,
that through a mistaken notion and practice, they prevent themselves
from doing much service, which otherwise might lie in their power, to
religion and virtue: I mean, by affecting so much to converse with each
other, and caring so little to mingle with the laity. They have their
particular clubs, and particular coffee-houses, where they generally
appear in clusters: A single divine dares hardly shew his person among
numbers of fine gentlemen; or if he happens to fall into such company,
he is silent and suspicious, in continual apprehension that some pert
man of pleasure should break an unmannerly jest, and render him
ridiculous. Now, I take this behaviour of the clergy to be just as
reasonable, as if the physicians should agree to spend their time in
visiting one another, or their several apothecaries, and leave their
patients to shift for themselves. In my humble opinion, the clergy's
business lies entirely among the laity; neither is there, perhaps, a
more effectual way to forward the salvation of men's souls, than for
spiritual persons to make themselves as agreeable as they can, in the