human nature," have laid out their diligence upon the consideration of those distempers to which men are exposed by particular states of life, and very learned treatises have been produced upon the maladies of the camp, the sea, and the mines. There are, indeed, few employments which a man accustomed to academical inquiries, and medical refinements, would not find reason for declining, as dangerous to health, did not his learning or experience inform him, that almost every occupation, however inconve nient or formidable, is happier and safer than a life of sloth. The necessity of action is not only demonstrable from the fabric of the body, but evident from observation of the universal prac tice of mankind; who, for the preservation of health in those whose rank or wealth exempts them from the necessity of lucrative labours, have invented sports and diversions, though not of equal use to the worid with manual trades, yet of equal fatigue to those who practise them, and differing only from the drudgery of the husbandman or manufacturer, as they are acts of choice, and therefore performed without the painful sense of compulsion. The huntsman rises early, pursues his game through all the dangers and obstructions of the chace, swims rivers, and scales precipices, till he returns home no less harassed than the soldier, and has, perhaps, sometimes incurred as great hazard of wounds and death: yet he has no motive to excite his ardour; he is neither subject to the command of a general, nor dreads the penalties of neglect or disobedience: he has neither profits nor honours to expect from his perils and conquests; but acts without the hope of mural or civic garlands, and must content himself with the praise of his te nants and companions. But such is the constitu. tion of Man, that labour is its own reward; nor will any external incitements be requisite, if it

be considered how much happiness is gained, and how much misery escaped, by frequent and violent agitation of the body. Ease is the most that can be hoped from a sedentary and inactive habit; but ease is a mere neutral state, between pain and pleasure. The dance of spirits, the bound of vigour, readiness of enterprise, and defiance of fatigue, are reserved for him that braces his nerves, and hardens his fibres; that keeps his limbs pliant with motion; and, by frequent exposure, fortifies his frame against the common accidents of cold and heat. With ease, however, if it could be secured, many would be content; but nothing terrestrial can be kept at a stand. Ease, if it is not rising into pleasure, will be set. tling into pain; and whatever hopes the dreams of speculation may suggest, of observing the proportion between retirement and labour, and keep. ing the body in a healthy state by supplies exactly equal to its weight, we know that, in effect, the vital powers, unexcited by motion, grow gradually languid, decay, and die. It is necessary to that perfection of which our present state is capable, that the mind and body should both be kept in action; that neither the faculties of the one nor the other should be suffered to grow lax or torpid for want of use; that neither health can be purchased by voluntary submission to ignor. ance, nor knowledge cultivated at the expense of that health, which must enable it either to give pleasure to its possessor, or assistance to others. It is too frequently the pride of students, to despise those amusements which give to the rest of mankind strength of limbs and cheerfulness of heart. Solitude and contemplation are, indeed, seldom consistent with such skill in common exercises or sports, as is necessary to make them practised with delight; and no man is willing to do that of which the necessity is not pressing, when he knows that his awkwardness but makes

him ridiculous. I have always admired the wis dom of those by whom our female education was instituted, for having contrived that every woman, of whatever condition, should be taught some arts of manufacture, by which the vacuities of recluse and domestic leisure may be filled up. These arts are more necessary, as the weakness of their sex, and the general system of life, debar ladies from many employments which, by diversifying the circumstances of men, preserve them from being cankered by the rust of their own thoughts. I know not how much of the virtue and happiness of the world may be the consequence of this judicious regulation. Perhaps the most powerful fancy might be unable to figure the confusion and slaughter that would be produced by so many piercing eyes, and vivid understandings, turned loose upon mankind, with no other business than to sparkle and intrigue, to perplex and destroy. For my own part, whenever chance brings within my observation a knot of misses busy at their needles, I consider myself as in the School of Virtue; and, though I have no extraordinary skill in plain-work or embroidery, look upon their operations with as much satisfaction as their governess, because I regard them as providing a security against the most dangerous ensnarers of the soul, by enabling them to exclude Idleness from their solitary moments, and with Idleness, her attendant train of passions, fancies, chimeras, fears, sorrows, and desires. Ovid and Cervantes will inform them that Love has no power but on those whom he catches unemployed: and Hector, in the Iliad, when he sees Andromache overwhelmed with tears, sends her for consolation to the loom and the distaff. Certain it is, that wild wishes, and vain imaginations, never take such firm possession of the mind, as when it is found empty and unemployed."

Idleness, indeed, was the spreading root from which all the vices and crimes of the oriental nuns so luxuriantly branched. Few of them had any taste for science, or were enabled, by the habits either of reflection, or industry, to charm away the tediousness of Solitude, or to relieve that weariness which must necessarily accompany their abstracted situation. The talents with which Nature had endowed them were uncultivated; the glimmering lights of reason were obscured by a blind and headlong zeal; and their tempers soured by the circumstances of their forlorn condition. Certain it is, that the only means of avoiding unhappiness and misery in Solitude, and perhaps in Society also, is to keep the mind continually engaged in, or occupied by, some laudable pursuit. The earliest professors of a life of Solitude, although they removed themselves far from the haunts of men, among" caverns deep and de. serts idle," where Nature denied her sons the most common of her blessings, employed themselves in endeavouring to cultivate the rude and barren soil during those intervals in which they were not occupied in the ordinary labours of religion; and even those whose extraordinary sanctity confined them the whole day in their cells, found the necessity of filling up their leisure, by exercising the manual arts for which they were respectively suited. The rules, indeed, which were originally established in most of the convents, ordained that the time and attention of a monk should never be for a moment vacant or unemployed: but this excellent precept was soon rendered obsolete; and the sad consequences which resulted from its non-observance we have already, in some degree, described.

CHAP. VIII.

The Conclusion.

THE anxiety with which I have endeavoured to describe the advantages and the disadvantages which, under particular circumstances, and in particular situations, are likely to be experienced by those who devote themselves to solitary retirement, may, perhaps, occasion me to be viewed by some as its romantic panegyrist, and by others as its uncandid censor. I shall therefore endeavour, in this concluding Chapter, to prevent a misconstruction of my opinion, by explicitly declaring the inferences which ought, in fairness, to be drawn from what I have said.

The advocates for a life of uninterrupted Society will, in all probability, accuse me of being a morose and gloomy philosopher; an inveterate enemy to social intercouse; who, by recommend. ing a melancholy and sullen seclusion, and interdicting mankind from enjoying the pleasures of life, would sour their tempers, subdue their af. fections, annihilate the best feelings of the heart, pervert the noble faculty of reason, and thereby once more plunge the world into that dark abyss of barbarism, from which it has been so happily rescued by the establishment aud civilization of Society.

The advocates for a life of continual Solitude will most probably, on the other hand, accuse me of a design to deprive the species of one of the most pleasing and satisfactory delights, by exciting an unjust antipathy, raising an unfounded alarm, depreciating the uses, and aggravating the abuses, of Solitude; and, by these means, of endeavouring to encourage that spirit of licentiousness and dissipation which so strongly marks the degeneracy, and tends to promote the vices of the age.