listens to their familiar conversation, and notes those discriminative qualities which add animation and interest to the evervarying spectacle of human life.

While the retired man thus views the world at a distance, it is with this advantage, that he is able to contemplate it more at leisure, with his passions less agitated, and his judgment less biassed, than he could have done as a party actually engaged. It is an old observation, that a looker-on often sees more than those who play the game; but in the game of life (if I may so call it), the retired man often sees more even than the looker-on. the world presses upon the sense, though without immediate interest, its impressions are commonly too powerful to leave the mind at sufficient liberty to form a calm and impartial judgment.

When

It must, however, on the other hand, be acknowledged, that books, unless happily selected, are unfaithful mirrors, and reflect.

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images of life which bear little resemblance to the originals. Even Even among the more judicious historians and moralists, there are few who are entirely exempt from this censure; and it often requires a strict attention to our own experience, and no common degree of ability, to reduce the representations they give us to their just value. Such a correction may therefore seem difficult for a retired man, whose experience of life is little; yet that little, when duly expanded by reflection, and skilfully applied, will generally secure him from any mistakes of a dangerous consequence.

But of all the mirrors fabricated by the press, and held up to the public, there are none more common, or more fallacious, than those fictitious histories which go under the name of novels and romances, where, for the most part, the modesty of nature is overstepped, where reason is degraded into sentiment, and where human language and human manners are almost lost in rant, affectation, and intrigue. When

the world is viewed in such representations it is scarcely to be known again; instead of men and women soberly engaged in business or innocent society, we are presented with a race of beings who have withdrawn themselves into a region of their own, and whose days and nights are wasted in fantastic pursuits, sentimental babble, and mad extravagance. For any one to take his ideas from such exhibitions, would be no less an injustice to the world, than a disgrace to his own understanding.

Among the many portentous evils that threaten both the present age and posterity, there are few which are more to be deplored than the general diffusion of these visionary writings; for what can be more deplorable than that young persons, instead of being taught to consider the present life as a state of serious trial, where much is to be endured and much to be forborne, should be flattered with the destructive imagination, that its great end is pleasure and amusement? and amusement? What is more

to be lamented, than that, by wrong principles early imbibed, the few days of man on earth should be embittered by perpetual disappointment, and at length terminated by a querulous and miserable old age, without any cheering prospect beyond the grave? This certainly is but ill to know the world, even in point of present enjoyment, and to know it still less in its relation to the world to come.

There is only one volume which describes the world in a manner perfectly unexceptionable; or if there be others, they are such as are derived from it. In all the rest it is either flattered or disparaged, it is either transformed into a paradise or into a howling wilderness; the Bible only represents it as it is, fallen indeed from its primitive glory and happiness, but not into hopeless guilt and misery; not into a condition destitute of the

light and grace of heaven, or, (to the humble Christian,) unprovided with ample support and comfort. Farther, the Bible, if

attentively studied, will supply the most sequestered hermit with a comprehensive knowledge of man, both in his individual and collective capacity; there he may trace human nature through every point of gradation, from the lowest state of depravity to the highest attainable excellence; there society is presented to his view in every degree of civilization, and under almost every form of government; there too he may contemplate the relative state of nations, in their commerce, their leagues, and their hostilities; and all this delivered with a truth and simplicity which would elsewhere be sought in vain.

It may appear then, from what has been advanced, that the votaries of retirement may come to know mankind in every respect in which it is important they should be known. And it is true, in fact, that some secluded men have men have displayed this knowledge in a degree which has scarcely been equalled by the greatest actors on the public stage. stage. Who has drawn the