with safety;-by the singularity of affecting to deprecate what others value so highly, they are certain of attracting the attention of mankind. If these men are sincere and speak the real sentiments of their hearts, let them not be disturbed in their favourite retirement; their opinions are harmless, and will have but little influence on the world at large. But let them extend to others that toleration, which is granted to themselves. If their quiet is not envied by the great, let them not impede the more active pursuit of others; if their cottage is left untouched, they should not attempt to destroy the palace which another is rearing; they may rest assured the world will not molest them, if they do not molest the world; in spite of their outcries, men will follow their different pursuits with the same ardour, and by endeavouring to deter them, they only betray their own impotence. The truth is, that in the great maze of life each may pursue his own path without fear of interrupting his neighbour; the roads are numerous, and broad enough, for us to pass without crowding each other. As each man has his particular turn, his favourite pursuit, he may follow it. I only wish he would not abuse his neighbour for choosing a different track. There is nothing more common, at the same time nothing more absurd, or a more infallible mark of a narrow understanding, than to condemn every pursuit but your own, and depreciate every study in comparison with some beloved object; surely the disposition, which refuses to mix with any but that of a similar texture, is not only uncharitable and unsociable, but ridiculous.

Every man must be a competent judge of what is most consonant to his own inclinations; and as every man must undoubtedly wish for happiness, it follows, that he will pursue the means which he thinks the most likely to attain it. The philosopher

and the active man in their different pursuits must each feel a pleasure, which the other is incapable of tasting. The contented soul of the one shrinks from the dangers and the tempests to which ambition is exposed; and the turbulent spirit of the other sickens. at the thought of a calm, wherein all his powers are rendered useless and inert.

The question is now reduced to this point, Of the different means by which we pursue happiness, which is the most likely to gain its end?' I must here observe, that as things are generally in extremes, both the active and inactive have pushed their opinions too far; if the one has too much phlegm, the other has too much fire; and as all extremes destroy themselves by too eager a pursuit of a favourite object, we often miss our aim. The man who, in chase of pleasure, plunges into the excesses of debauchery, or he who, in the rigour of his morality, obstinately rejects all pleasures, and morosely secludes himself from society, lest he should be contaminated, have in the eye of wisdom equally been misled. Him who considers fame as not worth possessing, or him who rests his whole happiness on the gaze of the multitude, such, as having entirely mistaken their ends, I exclude from the question, as wishing to confine it to those, who pursue their inclinations with moderation, and found them on rational principles. On the first view the retired man seems to proceed on the surer grounds. His happiness depends upon himself alone; his resources are contained within himself, and consequently are not exposed to the vicissitudes, which a man of the world must inevitably experience. The latter is liable to have his schemes thwarted, and projects defeated, by those whose interests clash with his. His ill fortune, the treachery of a friend, or the ingratitude of his country, may deprive him of the reward of his labours, and leave him destitute

in the evening of his days, when his powers are exhausted, and he is no longer able to cope with the difficulties which surround him.

This is all specious, perhaps true: but let us take the reverse of the scene.-The calm contented happiness which is to roll for years, in the noiseless tenor of its way' is, I believe to be found only in the raptures of poetry, what is called philosophy, and enthusiasm. For the first, fiction is its peculiar province; for the second, it is a Utopian scheme, which has never been realized; and who regards the mad reveries of an enthusiastic visionary? This calm, half-animated existence pleases from novelty in speculation: the man who has been tossed in a tempest, is delighted for a time with the tranquillity of a calm; but who wishes to stagnate in a calm for ever? the same revolution of the same objects in eternal succession, without change or variety, must fatigue at last; our stock of ideas in such a situation are soon exhausted; the mind ceases to dwell with delight on objects (though beautiful in themselves), which she has so often contemplated, and with whose perfections she is minutely acquainted. She is convinced of the truth of the inference she has drawn from those objects; and as she has viewed them in every light they are capable of being viewed in, can we wonder that she wishes for a change? Have we never examined a beautiful prospect till our sight is satiated, and our curiosity exhausted? The mind in retirement loses much of its elasticity, by wanting that stimulus, which the hopes and fears of a busy life continually supply. It is variety, so entirely lost in retirement, which gives us fresh spirits to proceed; and which serves as a spur to awaken us from satiety and languor.

Never less alone than when alone' is the splendid sentiment of a Roman hero, and has been the uni

versal motto of the advocates of retirement. It is a noble sentiment, and worthy of the great man from whom it fell. But it should be remembered, that this truly illustrious hero was not the mere recluse. Scipio was eminent amongst the most eminent, universally acknowledged a statesman, general, scholar, and philosopher; by a felicity rarely attained he blended the opposite qualities of an active life, and a philosophic ease. Perhaps after all this altercation, the dispute, like most others of the same kind, must be settled by a composition; and the man who like Scipio can unite such opposite virtues, is the character we ought to imitate.

If the world was entirely filled with the bustling and ambitious, such would be the tumult, that anarchy and confusion must inevitably prevail; if with philosophers only, life would stagnate, and its scenes be rendered insipid. At present they are as a mutual check on each other, by which the proper balance is kept between them; the reproof of the one restrains the licentiousness into which the other, unless so curbed, might be apt to fall; and the supercilious pride, which philosophy is apt to indulge against those who are not of her sect, is checked by the contempt that pride is sure to meet with from the opposite and far more numerous party.Cowley, who had tried the promised felicity of retirement, regretted the loss of that society which he had voluntarily abandoned.

To regulate but not suppress the efforts of ambition, is a task worthy of true philosophy; but surely to obstruct the growth of knowledge, by inculcating 'that all knowledge is vanity,' is not so laudable an undertaking. This at once strikes at the root of all desire to exert that mental superiority, which is the attribute of men alone. If we are prepossessed with this notion, who will sacrifice his health, and wear out his abilities in pursuit of that whose end is

vanity? For who is willing to labour in vain, or to sow where he has no prospect of reaping? I cannot be persuaded that the desire of knowledge, which is so universally prevalent in man, could be implanted in us only to torment us; only to convince us, that after years of fruitless toil, that toil might have been spared, as no advantage could be derived from it. Those who attend only to the minutiae of science, may with reason be reproved, as directing their attention to trifles, whilst they leave the more important parts unexamined; but surely the discoveries of Newton, or the essays of Locke, are not to be considered as the effusions of ignorance under the disguise of knowledge? Has man been declared the lord of this lower world, has he been endowed with all his various faculties, and has nature implanted in him his various passions, that he may be the laughing stock of superior beings? Is it not his duty, rather, as being placed here in a state of probation, to exert, not to bury, his talents? To me at least it is plain, that such would be the wish of every rational being.

It is no easy task to trace these pretended philosophers through the different links which connect their system. Even Socrates himself, wise and good as he was, is not entirely free from the fault which infected his brethren. The confession that the summit of his knowledge was, that he knew nothing,' was the effect of vanity, concealed under the mask of pretended humility. I don't know how it is,' said Phryne, these men may talk of their wisdom and their temperance, but they knock at my door as often as other men.' The exemption from the passions other men are subject to, which they claim as the privilege of their sect, was surely only an empty boast. What Tacitus said of Augustus refusing the empire, may be equally applied to their outward neglect of fame,' Imperium specie recusantis

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