Selected quad for the lemma: city_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
city_n	great_a	part_n	town_n	5,791	4	6.1013	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A58626	Avona, or, A transient view of the benefit of making rivers of this kingdom navigable occasioned by observing the scituation of the city of Salisbury upon the Avon, and the consequence of opening that river to that city : communicated by letter to a friend at London / by R.S.	R. S.	1675 (1675)	Wing S125; ESTC R22444	11,862	38

AVON A OR A TRANSIENT VIEW Of the Benefit of making RIVERS Of this Kingdom NAVIGABLE OCCASIONED By observing the Scituation of the City of SALISBURY upon the AVON and the Consequence of opening that River to that City Communicated by Letter to a Friend at LONDON By R. S. Sola est fiducia Nilo LONDON Printed by T. R. N. T. for John Courtney Book-seller in Sarum 1675. A Transient view of the benefit of making the Avon by Salisbury and other Rivers of this Kingdom Navigable Communicated by Letter to his Friend at London SIR TO maintain that Correspondence of so very great satisfaction and advantage on my part begun betwixt us I shall give you an account of something I met with in my way homewards from your great City having nothing else ready at present But by the next I shall entertain you with some not inconsiderable observations made about these parts and some very useful experiments now almost perfected I am sure you remember that the Inhabitants of Salisbury obtained an Act for making their River Navigable but as if that had been enough they have hitherto spent all their first vigour in discourse But now at my return as if they meant to proceed effectually they talk of nothing but of procuring subscriptions for raising Money of agreeing with some able Person to undertake the work And the Mayor and Commonalty of the City have taken forth a Commission under the Broad Seal to impower them to go on with it So that if they could not agree 't is probable some short time may give beginning to the work which because I have some affection for I shall give you my thoughts of The Avon you must know having its Spring in the North-parts of Wiltshire holds on a course from North to South of about Twenty Miles by Vp-Avon Enford Amesbury and by Stratford under the Old Sorbiodunum to New Salisbury upon its approach to which City divers small Channels are derived from it by which part of it is conveyed through most of the Streets The residue in a large Bed passes on the West-side of the Town and having run the whole length of the City and Close it receives at the South-West Angle of the Close the Wily and the Nadder The former of which rising about Warminster and passing by Heytsbury and receiving several Rills by the way meets with the Nadder about Wilton and from thence they both pass towards Salisbury and joyn with the Avon at the place before named The Avon increased by these two Rivers either of them near Twenty Miles distant from their first Springs before this their last confluence runs under Harnham Bridge which is that we pass over in our way to the City from the Western-parts and within two or three Furlongs receives another not inconsiderable River from the North-East at a place called Muttons Bridge betwixt which two Bridges all those several Rills which the City had borrowed out of the Avon are returned again into its Channel with the access of which and several others in its course afterwards by Downton Forthingbridge and Ringwood in the New-Forrest it runs on to Christ-Church about Twenty Mile from Salise and there discharges it self into the Sea Whoever shall consider the largeness of the River here at this place and the continual increase of it in its passage to the Sea will rather wonder as I have often done that no benefit has been hitherto made of it then any ways doubt that it is able to answer the greatest they can reasonably expect from it it reflecting very much upon the Inhabitants of this place That when Nature had so opportunely provided a sufficiency of Waters They should be so much wanting to themselves as not to afford those Waters a convenient Channell But what you and I talked of the other day of the several Genius's of Ages may have place here And therefore without being too severe to the discretion of this particular place we shall be contented to charge this long oversight upon the Genius of the foregoing Ages which its evident was not so quick and active in apprehending the means of improving what lay before them as the present is as is daily seen not only in the great advancements of Art and useful knowledge in the improving of our Lands c. but in the same kind too As appears by the many Acts lately passed for making several of our Rivers Navigable divers of which are since prosecuted to effect A searching thriving Genius reserv'd for this present Age to wait on and perfect that Felicity which the past Calamities it has safely emerg'd out of will make it at last seem worthy of and set off with a greater Lustre if our own supiness in not laying hold on those opportunities it offers suffer it not to escape us since the particular Genius of every Age moving on upon the same Wheel that time does being once pass'd is as irrevocable as that time that presented it both of them as they enter so passing off together And this is it may possibly awake the Inhabitants of this place to endeavour to make a further use of the opportunity of their Scituation and not to sit down any longer contented with that little contrivance which pleas'd their Ancestors so very much of cutting those Channells I mention'd but now and making but this only use of the Avon To keep their Streets clean But to endeavour to improve it to those nobler advantages which the bounty of the River will most certainly afford e'm For to doubt of such advantages to be made by making such Rivers as this is Navigable as at my being here some Gentlemen living thereabout in the Hill-Countrey as they call it did is but a piece of stupidity as is not worth a refuting it being all one as to question whether Navigation be advantagious or no Therefore as when things evident from sense and experience are denied we supersede arguments and bid our adversaries only to make use of their senses and confute themselves So here let any one who thinks otherwise but only look about him and observe the vast disproportion between the wealth of such places otherwise equal which are open to drive a Trade by Sea and those which are bound up within the Land or which is all one the difference betwixt the Estate of a Tradesman and of a Merchant But there is more advantage to those places which being seated far within the Land as this is do enjoy the benefit of Commerce by Sea by some Navigable River then to those Port-Towns which are seated in some Creeke or Bay only and are as I may call it Land-lock'd having no passage up into the Land but by Carriages as we see in Poole and Lynn in Dorset and in a number of other port-Port-Towns of like Scituation in other parts quite round the Island For such places though the Sea brings in commodities to them yet they can neither without great charge convey those

commodities higher up into the Land nor without the like charge receive the Inn-land commodities to export again Whereas Cities seated upon Navigable Rivers far within the Land look like some Noble Exchange of Natures own designing where the Native and the Forreigner may immediately meet and put off to each other the particular commodities of the growth of their own Countreys the Native as a Merchant receiving the Forreign Goods at the first hand and exchanging his own for them at the very place where they are made or grow or at most going no further to it then to his ordinary Market And as there is more of profit in such a Scituation so there is of Health and Pleasantness for we know That Scurvies Quartanes and other lingring Diseases are more frequent near the Sea then higher within the Land where the Air coming to us from the Neighbouring Plains Fields and Woods is more sprightly and stirring and brings along with it the peculiar Health and Amenities of those places it came from Whereas the Inhabitants nigh the Sea must be content to take as we use to say one with t'other And as they enjoy the benefits which flow in upon e'm thence so must they abide its inconveniencies too But in such Scituations as this all the advantages of the Sea are fully and equally enjoyed with those places seated nigh it and only the injuries left out And if there be any thing in so slight a Remarque the Scituation of those places far within the Land upon some River or in draught of the Sea seems to carry more of State when the Inhabitants being remov'd at a distance as in London Antwerp and the wealth of the Sea waits on e'm at home then when they go forth and attend it on the Shoar But it is not so much the pleasure or Healthiness of a place that usually takes the Common Inhabitant much less its Scituation in point of Honour as we may call it as the profit and advantage he shall find in it And this as the Inhabitants of Salisbury in patticular may assure themselves of so may you and I and the whole Kingdom look upon this and all other of like Nature as upon works of a National and Publick Emolument for when so many considerable places shall be enabled to look out toward a Trade at Sea our strength in Shipping and Mariners will be increased Numbers of Lazy and Idle Persons set on work And that Royal Trade of Fishing of so vast concernment to these Kingdoms for which His Majesty has laid such excellent Foundations will be very much advanc'd from the Number and Quality of Persons in and nigh those places and all almost such Rivers in their course to the Sea who from the opportunity of their Scituation will see themselves so much concerned for their own benefit to pursue those publick ends which are inseperably woven their private ones And here give me leave to take a view as they who having gained the top of some Mountain do of a fair but distant Landschap towards which they are Travelling whose extremities though they appear faint shady and confus'd And the particular objects seem broken undistinguish'd and blended together yet the vastness of them is not the less considerable from that Indistinction it being rather an access and reputation to Greatness then any diminution to render it indesinite of the future Glory which the effecting the present design of making our Rivers Navigable will undoubtedly advance this Kingdom too I would not have you think me too confident in saying thus for all the past and present experience of the whole World will bear witness of what infallible consequence Navigation is to Opulence Greatness and Empire And that as those People who Trade by Sea shall always more abound in Wealth then the Inn-landers so if a contest happen between two such People the Maritime People shall always be of greater ability to maintain the Ware-And the virtue of the People and of their Chiefs being otherwise equal shall in fine prevail Look back then upon the Phaenicians elder than Storv for they flourish'd in the Fabulous Age and you will find e'm great in themselves and greater in their Descendants and Colonies powerful even to a Proverb the extent of the Tyria Maria being as vast as the bounds of the then known Sea To all which the dread of their Power gave Law and Name And that one City Tyre sustaining the whole force of the Chaldaean Monarchy for thirteen years when in its oppugnation by Nebuchadnezzar Every Head was made Bald and every shoulder was Peel'd by carrying those Materials which filling up the Seas that divided the Island on which Tyre stood from the Continent enabled him to make his approaches by Land abounding in all the plenty the Neighbouring Regions and Islands could afford e'm in exchange for their fam'd Tyrian Purple whilst in the mean time the Mountainers and Hill-Country Gentlemen of Syria like their Posterity the present Wild Arabs were forc'd to live upon the dry revenue of a barren desert their expeditions being chiefly undertaken against the next Neighbouring Flocks and Heards and instead of cloathing themselves in Vests of Silk and Purple acknowledg'd themselves in this only obliged to the Indulgence of their Clime which affording them Sun enough might excuse e'm from wearing any Look next upon the Issue of the contest betwixt those two famous Cities Athens and Sparta in the Peloponnesian War when the Spartans who lived upon the revenue of their Lands those Lands being wasted were utterly disabled any longer to maintain the War nor could they by all those difficult habits of Sufferance and Frugality buy up their Fortunes But to the till then unknown dishonour of the Spartan Name which upon the strength of a peculiar Discipline had bore it self up for four hundred years were enforc'd to sue for an unworthy Peace Whereas the Athenians their Territories being in like manner wasted by the Spartans and their City block'd up towards the Land liv'd during that restraint in all plenty and recovering themselves by their Trade at Sea carryed over the War to the Spartans Dominions and prevailed over them in despight of virtue The same is evident from the different abilities of the Romans and Carthaginians in the second punick War for though the Carthaginians had bought the first Peace of the Romans for two Thousand two Hundred Talents to be paid in Twenty years of which a proportionable quantity was paid before the breaking out of the Second War And though in the same intervall the Romans unjustly extorted other Twelve Hundred Talents upon pretence that some preparations which the Carthaginians made for the recovery of Sardinia were intended against Rome and consequently at the beginning of the Second War the Romans were as much richer then the Carthaginians as the access of those Sums could make e'm And the Carthaginians besides the loss of those Sums being also in that interval exhausted by a dangerous