ves much more to his friends than his hogs.

This, with many other evils, arises from the error in men's judgments,
and not making true distinctions between persons and things. It is
usually thought, that a few sheets of parchment, made before a male and
female of wealthy houses come together, give the heirs and descendants
of that marriage possession of lands and tenements; but the truth is,
there is no man who can be said to be proprietor of an estate, but he
who knows how to enjoy it. Nay, it shall never be allowed, that the land
is not a waste, when the master is uncultivated. Therefore, to avoid
confusion, it is to be noted, that a peasant with a great estate is but
an incumbent, and that he must be a gentleman to be a landlord. A
landlord enjoys what he has with his heart, an incumbent with his
stomach. Gluttony, drunkenness, and riot, are the entertainments of an
incumbent; benevolence, civility, social and human virtues, the
accomplishments of a landlord. Who, that has any passion for his native
country, does not think it worse than conquered, when so large
diversions of it are in the hands of savages, that know no use of
property but to be tyrants; or liberty, but to be unmannerly? A
gentleman in a country life enjoys Paradise with a temper fit for it; a
clown is cursed in it with all the cutting and unruly passions man could
be tormented with when he was expelled from it.

There is no character more deservedly esteemed than that of a country
gentleman, who understands the station in which heaven and nature have
placed him. He is father to his tenants, and patron to his neighbours,
and is more superior to those of lower fortune by his benevolence than
his possessions. He justly divides his time between solitude and
company, so as to use the one for the other. His life is spent in the
good offices of an advocate, a referee, a companion, a mediator, and a
friend. His counsel and knowledge are a guard to the simplicity and
innocence of those of lower talents, and the entertainment and happiness
of those of equal. When a man in a country life has this turn, as it is
to be hoped thousands have, he lives in a more happy condition than any
is described in the pastoral descriptions of poets, or the
vainglorious solitudes recorded by philosophers.

To a thinking man it would seem prodigious, that the very situation in a
country life does not incline men to a scorn of the mean gratifications
some take in it. To stand b