4

human studies. And if to his speculations he should add a little practical philosophy; should he turn, for instance, his attention to agriculture, and endeavour by ingenious arts to draw from our common mother the earth a more ample produce, and so to facilitate and increase the supply of human wants; this would open to him a new source of pleasing and laudable occupation. Still, however, as neither the culture of the mind nor of the soil is secured by the same strong and constant impulsion of the passions, which bears men forward in public life, the tendency of nature towards an indolent repose will almost unavoidably gather strength, and labour gradually give place to ease, unless reinforced and sustained by motives derived from another world.

1

There are few instances, I believe, to be met with, in any situation, of a regular and supported conduct, without the aid of religion. This is necessary to fill up

and quicken those dull intervals which happen in the busiest life, and to preserve a retired one from total stagnation. It is religion which must plant in the soul that motive principle, which will display itself in a useful course of employment, whatever be the circumstances in which we are placed; like a perennial spring, that still sends forth a pure and salubrious stream, notwithstanding every alteration of weather or vicissitude of seasons.

The activity of man as a rational being, depends chiefly on the end he has in view. Now the end presented to him by religion is of the most excellent and interesting nature, and, if duly apprehended, will always command a vigorous exercise of his moral and intellectual powers; and thus furnish him with the noblest occupation, even in the midst of a desert. He who is fully conscious that he has a soul to save, and an eternity to secure, and, still further to animate his endeavours,

that God and angels are the spectators of his conduct, can never want motives for exertion in the most sequestered solitude.

II. Another evil particularly incident to retirement is humour. He who is under no controul from others, which is most likely to happen in sequestered life, will, without great self-command, be very liable to give a loose to his caprices and his oddities. In society there are few who have such an ascendancy as enables them to impose their will as a law to all about them; men there ineet with their match, reason is opposed to reason, and one caprice to ano- ther; mutual compliances are found necessary in order to preserve any degree of amicable intercourse; and thus the waywardness of humour is partly restrained and corrected. It is otherwise in retirement, where it is common for a country gentleman, when he looks around him, to see none but inferiors and dependants, who, whatever they may mutter in secret, find it prudent or expedient to give way

to his peculiar fancies, which, to a vulgar mind is often no small temptation to indulge them with the greater wanton

ness.

Nor is this disposition confined to particular acts; it sometimes shews itself in a system of singularities. The humourist will regulate the most indifferent circumstances by laws as unalterable as those of the Medes and Persians. Amidst all the changes of fashion, he will pertinaciously wear the same uniform; copied, perhaps, from the age of his great-grandfather. Every punctilio of his table shall be according to stated rules of his own prescription; he will not eat his dinner unless seated in his own chair, nor drink but out of his own cup. At the accustomed hour, he will walk up the same hill, gaze at scenes he has surveyed before a thousand times, and then return back whence he came. Or should his humour take another turn, no one shall be able to divine, a minute before hand, what he means either to do, or to

have done. In all cases his motto is the

same:

Stat pro ratione voluntas.

As all this proceeds chiefly from a bent to gratify ourselves in trifling objects; and as this disposition may farther be resolved into a contraction of the understanding as well as of the heart; the remedy must lie in the enlargement of the former by knowledge, and of the latter by charity. In this way we shall be preserv ed equally from a monastic attention to minute regulations, and from a whimsical irregularity of temper, of which the one tends to narrow and enfeeble, and the other to dissipate, all the powers of the mind; and at the same time shall farther be secured from that contempt of our inferiors, which would permit us to pursue our own gratification, without a due regard to their convenience or feelings.

I am willing on the other hand to allow, in extenuation, that the disposition.