in, when the perusing their letters may employ part of their time,
as the answering them does on other days of the week; and they
frequently meet at the tavern in the evening, either to transact
their affairs, or to take a cheerful glass after the business of the
day is over.

As to the wives and daughters of the merchants and principal
tradesmen, they endeavour to imitate the Court ladies in their
dress, and follow much the same diversions; and it is not uncommon
to see a nobleman match with a citizen's daughter, by which she
gains a title, and he discharges the incumbrances on his estate with
her fortune. Merchants' sons are sometimes initiated into the same
business their fathers follow; but if they find an estate gotten to
their hands, many of them choose rather to become country gentlemen.

As to the lawyers or barristers, these also are frequently the
younger sons of good families; and the elder brother too is
sometimes entered of the Inns of Court, that he may know enough of
the law to keep his estate.

A lawyer of parts and good elocution seldom fails of rising to
preferment, and acquiring an estate even while he is a young man. I
do not know any profession in London where a person makes his
fortune so soon as in the law, if he be an eminent pleader. Several
of them have of late years been advanced to the peerage; as Finch,
Somers, Cowper, Harcourt, Trevor, Parker, Lechmere, King, Raymond,
&c., scarce any of them much exceeding forty years of age when they
arrived at that honour.

The fees are so great, and their business so engrosses every minute