While We Stayed Here Some Time Viewing This Town And Coast, We Had
Opportunity To Observe The Pleasant Way Of
Conversation as it is
managed among the gentlemen of this county and their families,
which are, without reflection, some of
The most polite and well-
bred people in the isle of Britain. As their hospitality is very
great, and their bounty to the poor remarkable, so their generous
friendly way of living with, visiting, and associating one with
another is as hard to be described as it is really to be admired;
they seem to have a mutual confidence in and friendship with one
another, as if they were all relations; nor did I observe the
sharping, tricking temper which is too much crept in among the
gaming and horse-racing gentry in some parts of England to be so
much known among them any otherwise than to be abhorred; and yet
they sometimes play, too, and make matches and horse-races, as they
see occasion.
The ladies here do not want the help of assemblies to assist in
matchmaking, or half-pay officers to run away with their daughters,
which the meetings called assemblies in some other parts of England
are recommended for. Here is no Bury Fair, where the women are
scandalously said to carry themselves to market, and where every
night they meet at the play or at the assembly for intrigue; and
yet I observed that the women do not seem to stick on hand so much
in this country as in those countries where those assemblies are so
lately set up--the reason of which, I cannot help saying, if my
opinion may bear any weight, is that the Dorsetshire ladies are
equal in beauty, and may be superior in reputation.
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