[66]. Stetch: as much land as lies between one farm and another.—Prov. Eng., Halliwell.

[67]. Lewis Roberts, The Merchant’s Map of Commerce, London, 1638. ‘The first systematic writer upon trade in the English language’ (Lowndes).

[68]. Had this sentence appeared in print anterior to Macaulay’s famous passage, the latter might have been deemed a plagiarism.

[69]. Hugh Boyd, a writer whose real name was Macaulay, author of two political tracts now forgotten. Died at Madras in 1791, having dissipated his wife’s fortune and his own.

[70]. Alex. Wedderburn, Earl of Rosslyn, Baron Loughborough. In 1778 Attorney-General; in 1793 succeeded Lord Thurlow to the Chancellorship. Died 1805.

[71]. Richard Watson, a celebrated prelate. In 1796 he published an answer to Paine’s Age of Reason. He was left an estate worth 24,000l. by a Mr. Luther, an entire stranger to him, author of many theological works and memoirs of himself. Died 1816.

[72]. Died in 1804. There is a notice of this writer in Watts’ Bibliotheca Britannica.

[73]. Irish Linen Board, established 1711; the Board abolished 1828. We do not learn upon what business Mr. Arbuthnot had gone to France.

[74]. That Arthur Young’s society was equally agreeable to the other sex Fanny Burney tells us. In the gossipy, ecstatic journal of her girlhood she writes: ‘Last night, whilst Hetty, Susey, and myself were at tea, that lively, charming, spirited Mr. Young entered the room. Oh, how glad we were to see him!’

[75]. A Suffolk squire, ardent Whig, and of considerable literary attainments. At his expense was published Bloomfield’s Farmer’s Boy.