Petty dedicates his treatise to Samuel Hartlib, and describes the main issue of his treatise as "the Advancement of Reall Learning." John William Adamson (1857–1949), who was a professor of education in the University of London in the beginning of the twentieth century, wrote extensively on the history of education and devoted a chapter of his Pioneers of Modern Education 1600–1700 (1905) to the two letters to Hartlib by Milton and Petty. He supposes that Hartlib may have received Milton's Of Education with mixed feelings, "there being in it both strictures and recommendations from which he was bound to dissent." Adamson thinks that Hartlib on the other hand, "must have extended a whole-hearted welcome" to The Advice of W.P. to Mr Samuel Hartlib, for the Advancement of some particular Parts of Learning. Petty was in full sympathy of the "New Philosophy", of which Francis Bacon can be regarded as the founder, and of which Hartlib was an enthusiastic promoter. Adamson points out that Petty lays some stress on the word "Real", "a significance roughly paralleled by the German use. Petty says that he has "had many flying thoughts, concerning the Advancement of Reall Learning in generall, but particularly of the Education of Youth, Mathematicks, Mechanicks, Physick, and concerning the History of Art and Nature", and he believes that his letter to Hartlib "can please only those few, that are Reall Friends to the Designe of Realities, not those who are tickled only with Rhetoricall Prefaces, Transitions and Epilogues, and charmed with fine Allusions and Metaphors (all of which I do not condemn)." In the body of the pamphlet, titled 'The Advice for Advancement of some particular Parts of Learning', which has a total of 26 pages, Petty begins with placing himself in the tradition of Francis Bacon ("Lord Verulam"). Adamson splits the "Advice" in four parts: pp. 1–3, in which Petty recommends the institution of Hartlib's cherished project of a General Intelligence Department, the "Office of Publick Address," whose officers shall search all existing records of inventions with the purpose of compiling a catalogue, making reference to such records easy. pp. 4–6, in which Petty explains that the material so arranged will make plain where invention is most wanted, and that capable men are thereupon to be set to work in the quarters thus discovered. pp. 7–17 create an image of how Petty's corps of researchers would proceed to their