ation; there is no sanctuary so inviolable, and no solitude so deep, where the world will not make its way, and find the means to practise its allurements, and inject its terrors; and sometimes with more effect than in the midst of its business or pleasures which shews, that the expediency of retirement, like all other practical rules, is not to be urged on the side of virtue without due exceptions, among which the two or three following may here be noticed.

The first is, when the imagination is more seductive than the senses. No one can be a stranger to the potency of this magic faculty, how it can heighten, combine, and vary, all our perceptions; and, in the depth of solitude, (as the monastic St. Jerome pathetically bewailed in his cell at Bethlehem,) can furnish out more captivating scenes of gaiety and splendour, than any which human life actually exhi bits. In this ideal world the underftanding of a recluse, without due care, may suffer greater deception, and his passions

be more incurably fascinated, than in the world he has left behind him; for, in the latter, the things themselves, which have their fixed natures and limited operations, may serve in some measure to correct his mistakes, and regulate his expectations; whereas in the former, should his imaginative power gain the ascendant, there remains no rule to which he may refer, and, like a crazy vessel out at sea without compass or land-mark, he must be driven wherever his fancies or his passions may chance to carry him. When a man has thus lost the command of himself, he is much fitter to be confined to some laborious occupation than let loose to his own reflections.

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Another case, where retirement is seldom adviseable, is that of melancholy; by which I mean a fixed depression of the spirits, whether arising without any known cause, or from an undue application to some particular object. This state of mind is no less unfavourable to virtue

than to peace; it belongs to the sorrow of the world, which worketh death; and the sooner we can get fairly rid of it the better. Solitude is the nurse of this complaint; and though a dissipated life, which is the vulgar remedy, is often worse than the disease, and sometimes aggravates it still more, there is no doubt that a prudent change of circumstances, with a mixture of agreeable and innocent society, is a probable way to disperse the gloom, and to restore the unhappy sufferer to a comfortable use of himself, both in retirement and in public.

Of all the species of melancholy, none calls more for our sympathy than that to which some good men are subject, when, for want of proper views of the grace of the gospel, and of the imperfection of our present state, they are ready to be overwhelmed with awful apprehensions of the divine holiness and majesty; or to sink down in helpless misery, under a sense of their remaining sinful infirmities, after

all their efforts to surmount them; or, at best, to deliver themselves up to an unnatural discipline or a visionary devotion, the religion of monks and hermits, which loves to haunt the obscurity of cloisters, or to wander in dreary solitudes. Let such, therefore, who from a morbid complexion of body or mind, are obnoxious to an evil so distressing and injurious, provide themselves an antidote in social life, and particularly in the conversation of persons of a rational and cheerful piety.

The last case I shall notice, by way of exception, respects those to whom retirement is dull and languid for want of employment; who in their chamber can neither entertain themselves with books, nor recur to resources in their own minds; and in the field can derive no pleasure from the contemplation of nature, nor find occupation in the labours of husbandry. Men of this character, instead of vainly affecting a life of abstraction, ought to seek in some public. situation, or

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honest business, that impulse which is necessary to preserve them from lapsing into a state of unmanly indolence or peevish discontent.

These instances may suggest to parents. and teachers how important it is, in the education of youth, to form them early to a taste for solitude, and to store their minds with such knowledge as may enable them to fill up an interval of retreat with advantage to themselves, and in a noble independence of the world. Thus disposed and qualified, they will be prepared to find a refuge from the bustle of business, and the turbulence of pleasure, in still life, where their agitated passions may gradually subside, and their better principles, wearied by a too long and violent exertion, may have time to breathe, and to recover their lost vigour.

Hence also may appear the importance of an education in the country. He whose youth has been habituated to rural scenes,