a diminution; or as if, from a region of light and plenitude, they had fallen into a dreary state of darkness and vacuity. This should be a lesson to all who meditate a retreat from the world, and induce them to cultivate before-hand those qualities and habits, which may add life and interest to the calm prospects and silent exhibitions of rural nature. And if there be any who have sequestered themselves without this due preparation, they ought to suffer patiently the effects of their rashness at the same time, there is no reason why they should sit down in despondence, since by a proper attention to themselves, and a steady and gentle perseverance, those more delicate powers of perception which are adapted to still life, and which, amidst the tumult of the world, have lain neglected and depressed, may yet gra dually be recovered, and called forth into happy activity. Still we must remember, that as age advances, and the senses and imagination grow languid, the most beautiful scenes of nature will lose their natural attractions; and that it is only the relation in which they stand to their Almighty Creator, and his glory thence reflected, that can render them lasting and unfading objects of our delightful contemplation, SECTION II. The Pleasures of a literary Retirement. In the preceding parts of this small work, the same topics have recurred under different aspects. History and Philosophy have been considered in their relation to Knowledge and Virtue; and will now again be viewed, together with Poetry, in the relation they bear to Happiness, or to those pleasures which they are suited to yield to their respective votaries. Lest such à recurrence should strike a less attentive reader as no more than a repetition, it seemed proper to premise this remark. We now proceed to the subject of the present section, under the threefold distribution here specified. I. On the Pleasures arising from the Study of History. According to a very sagacious observer, the history of mankind is "little else but * " the history of uncomfortable, dreadful passages; and that a great part of it, however things are palliated and gilded over, is scarcely to be read by a good-natured man without amazement, horror, tears And a few pages afterwards he thus speaks: "To one who carefully peruses the story and face of the world, what appears to prevail in it? Is it not corruption, vice, iniquity, folly at least? Are not debauching, getting per fas aut nefas, defaming one another, erecting tyrannies of one kind or other, propagating empty and senseless opinions with bawling and fury, the great business of this world?" This indeed is a sad and melancholy view; let us therefore endeavour to relieve the gloom, by presenting the history of mankind under some other aspects. The pleasure we derive from the perusal of ancient history is partly because it is an * Wollaston's Religion of Nature, p. 382, + Id. p. 392. cient. The mind, being formed for what is infinite, is naturally delighted with an image of unlimited duration as well as of unbounded space. The retrospection of events, which are faintly discerned in the depth of past ages, is no less pleasing than the view of an extensive prospect, where the dusky hills in the extremity of the horizon are scarcely distinguishable from the clouds. Further, we are gratified with every information relative to the primitive state of mankind, upon the same principle that nations or great families are particularly delighted in tracing the history of their founders or remote ancestors. Lastly, the simplicity of ancient manners, so different from our own, is another source of the pleasure we experience in our enquiries into the earliest ages. While we contemplate the patriarchal times, we seem transported into a new world, where men acted more under the conduct of uncorrupted nature, and, as Plato has expressed it, lived nearer to the gods; for it is observable, that as we advance farther into |