hottest season.

I have heard it affirmed, however, that many citizens live beyond
their income, which puts them upon tricking and prevaricating in
their dealings, and is the principal occasion of those frequent
bankruptcies seen in the papers; ordinary tradesmen drink as much
wine, and eat as well, as gentlemen of estates; their cloth, their
lace, their linen, are as fine, and they change it as often; and
they frequently imitate the quality in their expensive pleasures.

As to the diversions of the inferior tradesmen and common people on
Sundays and other holidays, they frequently get out of town; the
neighbouring villas are full of them, and the public-houses there
usually provide a dinner in expectation of their city guests; but if
they do not visit them in a morning, they seldom fail of walking out
in the fields in the afternoon; every walk, every public garden and
path near the town are crowded with the common people, and no place
more than the park; for which reason I presume the quality are
seldom seen there on a Sunday, though the meanest of them are so
well dressed at these times that nobody need be ashamed of their
company on that account; for you will see every apprentice, every
porter, and cobbler, in as good cloth and linen as their betters;
and it must be a very poor woman that has not a suit of Mantua silk,
or something equal to it, to appear abroad in on holidays.

And now, if we survey these several inhabitants in one body, it will
be found that there are about a million of souls in the whole town,
of whom there may be 150,000 men and upwards capable of bearing
arms, that is, between eighteen and sixty.