Norden's work contains many judicious observations on the " different natures of grounds, how they may be employed, how they may be bettered, reformed and amended."
During these four years Stevenson's health, which was always bettered by life out of doors, gave him little trouble.
In several respects he bettered the economic conditions of the papal states, but was disinclined to undertake the needed thoroughgoing reform of its administration.
True, the raw material could scarcely be bettered.
Matters were not bettered by the Act of Union signed in a cellar in High Street in 1707, amidst the execrations of the people, and it was not till the hopes of the Jacobites were blasted at Culloden (1746) that the townsfolk began to accept the inevitable.