It supports many professors of the law; physicians of high repute, and medical quacks of very low.

Social life and pleasure is abundant, with clubs, card-parties, and theatres.

It boasts an almshouse, hospital, prisons, and schools for all classes.

The poem is divided into twenty-four cantos or sections, written as "Letters" to an imaginary correspondent who had bidden the writer "describe the borough," each dealing with its separate topic--professions, trades, sects in religion, inns, strolling players, almshouse inhabitants, and so forth.

These descriptions are relieved at intervals by elaborate sketches of character, as in _The Parish Register_--the vicar, the curate, the parish clerk, or by some notably pathetic incident in the life of a tenant of the almshouse, or a prisoner in the gaol.