The same philosophy will be of no less use to those who meditate a retreat after a course of years spent in public. It will teach them the proper qualifications for such a change, and that many things besides hounds and horses, murmuring streams and shady groves, sumptuous houses and large estates, are necessary to form a comfortable retirement. Above all, it will direct them to those inward resources, without which every condition of life is inevitably subject to vanity and disappointment. Thus they will be instructed to a cautious procedure, so as not to take leave of the world before they are well prepared to meet all the circumstances of their new situation, lest, after a few years consumed in vacancy and weariness, they should be tempted, like many others, to tread back their steps, and again to mingle in the business or dissipations which they seemed to have entirely relinquished.

It will be likewise of service in the case of those, to whom an interchange of

business and retirement is preferable to either of them separately, and who wish to combine them both to the greatest advantage.

These are some of the various uses of the philosophy which I have endeavoured to illustrate, and whose importance is such as may apologize for every attempt to recommend it to the public attention.

In estimating the comparative merits of a public and retired life, which is a case that will frequently occur in the ensuing pages, I have been solicitous to hold the balance with an even hand, to defraud neither scale of its just weights, and to admit none that are false. The reader, it is presumed, will find no attempt at vain panegyric, or unjust disparagement, no fanciful descriptions of rural innocence and felicity, nor any aggravated censures of the business or pursuits of the world. On the contrary, I am willing to hope, that he will perceive through the whole a character of truth and simplicity, a care

to exclude all partial affection and rhetorical declamation, and to make some approach towards the unbiassed and temperate manner of a just philosophical enquiry.

II. I would now particularly address myself to several sorts of readers, in order to obviate certain prejudices, to which I foresee they will be liable in perusing the following reflections.

First, I would offer a word to the admirers of what is usually called classical learning. This, I know, is an idol to which many, even in the present philosophical age, bow down and pay their worship; and whoever refuses to unite in the same homage is in danger of being taxed, by some one or other, with a kind of literary profaneness, or at least with a degree of ignorant barbarism. As I have no mind to incur any man's censure if I can fairly avoid it, I would intreat such a literato to let his indignation abate before he pass

a definitive sentence; and this request may seem the more equitable, as I freely consent, on my part, to abandon to his most severe reprobation, whatever I have advanced upon the classics or classical education, that shall be found in contradiction, either to sound learning, or to common sense: but he must not expect that deference to long custom and inveterate prejudice, which is due exclusively to reason and truth. I do not know that I have been deficient in any proper respect to the classics, by which I mean chiefly the heathen poets. I have spoken of them in no harsher terms than some of the gravest heathen philosophers themselves have done, or than are warranted by a much higher authority, namely, that of divine revelation. It is for want of recurring to this infallible standard of truth and excellence, that such extravagant regard has been paid to the productions of pagan writers, which too are now become much less necessary, since we are provided with so many admirable models.

of our own, superior to theirs in point of science, and scarce inferior either in "point of genius or elegance: yet we still continue to go down to the Philistines, to sharpen every one his share, and his coulter, and his axe, and his mattock, as if there was no smith in Israel *.

I would next address myself to such as are disposed to exalt the human understanding beyond all due measure, and to make philosophy a rival to religion. Here, as in the former instance, I must beg a truce with prejudice, or, to use a softer language, I would desire such persons ETTEXEW, to suspend, agreeably to the true philosophic character, and not to censure before they have fairly considered what shall be advanced. When this is done, it may appear, that my design is not to depreciate human reason, but only to direct it to those aids and assistances, without which it can never fully discover to us

*See Sam. xiii. 19, 20.