he above tract of Dr. Beale's, he thus breaks out in praise of
the Orchards of this _deep and rich_ county:--"From the greatest person
to the poorest cottager, all habitations are encompassed with orchards,
and gardens, and in most places our hedges are enriched with rows of
fruit trees, pears or apples. All our villages, and generally all our
highways, (all our vales being thick set with rows of villages), are in
the spring time sweetened and beautified with the blossomed trees, which
continue their changeable varieties of ornament, till (in the end of
autumn), they fill our garners with pleasant fruit, and our cellars with
rich and winy liquors. Orchards, being the pride of our county, do not
only sweeten, but also purify the ambient air, which I conceive to
conduce very much to the constant health and long lives for which our
county hath always been famous. We do commonly devise a shadowy walk
from our gardens, through our orchards (which is the richest, sweetest,
and most embellished grove) into our coppice woods, or timber woods."
Dr. Beale does not praise the whole of their land. He describes some as
"starvy, chapt, and cheany, as the basest land upon the Welch
mountains." He makes amends, however, for this, for he describes the
nags bred on their high grounds, as very different from our present
hackney-coach horses; they "are airey and sinewy, full of spirits and
vigour, in shape like the _barbe_, they rid ground, and gather courage
and delight in their own speed."

[33] A Lady Gerard is mentioned in two letters of Mr. Pope, to W.
Fortescue, Esq. They have no date to them. They appear in Polwhele's
History of Devonshire. "I have just received a note from Mrs. Blount,
that she and Lady Gerard will dine here to-day." And "Lady Gerard was to
see Chiswick Gardens (as I imagined) and therefore forced to go from
hence by five; it was a mortification to Mrs. Blount to go, when there
was a hope of seeing you and Mr. Fortescue." There are three more
letters, without date, to Martha Blount, written from the Wells at
Bristol, and from Stowe, in which Pope says, "I have no more room but to
give Lady Gerard my hearty services." And "once more my services to Lady
Gerard." "I desire you will write a post-letter to my man John, at what
time you would have the pine apples, to send to Lady Gerard." Probably
Martha Blount's Lady Gerard was a descendant of Rea's.

[34] A most curious account of the _Tulipomania_, or rage for tulips,