with no obstruction or disturbance from anybody.

Winchester is a place of no trade other than is naturally occasioned by
the inhabitants of the city and neighbouring villages one with another.
Here is no manufacture, no navigation; there was indeed an attempt to
make the river navigable from Southampton, and it was once made
practicable, but it never answered the expense so as to give
encouragement to the undertakers.

Here is a great deal of good company, and abundance of gentry being in
the neighbourhood, it adds to the sociableness of the place. The clergy
also here are, generally speaking, very rich and very numerous.

As there is such good company, so they are gotten into that new-fashioned
way of conversing by assemblies. I shall do no more than mention them
here; they are pleasant and agreeable to the young peoples, and sometimes
fatal to them, of which, in its place, Winchester has its share of the
mirth. May it escape the ill-consequences!

The hospital on the south of this city, at a mile distant on the road to
Southampton, is worth notice. It is said to be founded by King William
Rufus, but was not endowed or appointed till later times by Cardinal
Beaufort. Every traveller that knocks at the door of this house in his
way, and asks for it, claims the relief of a piece of white bread and a
cup of beer, and this donation is still continued. A quantity of good
beer is set apart every day to be given away, and what is left is
distributed to other poor, but none of it kept to the next day.

How the revenues of this hospital, which should maintain the master and
thirty private gentlemen (whom they call Fellows, but ought to call
Brothers), is now reduced to maintain only fourteen, while the master
lives in a figure equal to the best gentleman in the country, would be
well worth the inquiry of a proper visitor, if such can be named. It is
a thing worthy of complaint when public charities, designed for the
relief of the poor, are embezzled and depredated by the rich, and turned
to the support of luxury and pride.

From Winchester is about twenty-five miles, and over the most charming
plains that can anywhere be seen (far, in my opinion, excelling the
plains of Mecca), we come to Salisbury. The vast flocks of sheep which
one everywhere sees upon these Downs, and the great number of those
flocks, is a sight truly worth observation; it is ordinary for these
flocks to contain from three thousand to five thou