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Whigism, therefore, is his abomination, and as commercial people are generally Whigs, they, and commerce itself, are equally out of favour. In other respects he is an excellent creature, and I could, perhaps, even as a humble companion, ill exchange him for many a better-bred person."

De Vere was moved with this picture, and said he could almost envy him.

"Almost as much," added he, " as I am disposed to envy the quiet of his master's solitude, even at my time of life, when, as is supposed, the world has, or ought to have, a right to all our interests."

"That is no more than true," returned the gentleman," and I should hope (though you have too much pensiveness on your brow for your age) that you have no disposition to renounce these interests. I assure you, though I live out of the world, I am by no means out of humour with it, and seem to return to it with pleasure, when ever a man like yourself comes to visit me."

De Vere bowed, and observed, that with the occupations which evidently employed him, his solitude could never be dull; he only wondered that, knowing the world as he seemed to do, and

not angry with it, as he had just professed, he should have so soon quitted it.

I

"I am not so young as you take me for," replied the gentleman, "but health and a contented disposition will do much for a man. thank God, I love my species, collectively and individually; nor do I think that because there are some knaves among them, the majority are not honest or benevolent."

De Vere drew his chair closer to the table, and was all attention at this speech. It foreboded, as he hoped, something that might fall in with those speculations on mankind, which, young as he was, had lately so absorbed him.

"If it were not the most impertinent thing in the world," said he, " and could I encourage myself to hope for it, from the frankness and kindness you have shewn me, it would complete the gratification I have met with to-night could I be favoured with the reasons which have inclined you to a way of life, at least uncommon, if not unaccountable. At any rate, I hope I may know the name of the person who so much obliges me."

"I have no secrets," replied the gentleman, nor is there a reason against a formal compliance with your request, except the total want

of incident in my, I fear, useless life; useless to others, though, if I have avoided the temptations of the world by it, it has not been so to myself. My name is Flowerdale, and if you know a baronet of that name in London you are acquainted with my brother."

De Vere blessed himself as in surprise, intimating that he knew Sir William Flowerdale extremely well, and that he even felt under many obligations to him.

"At the same time," said he, "I should have studied long before I could have discovered you to be relations, from any family resemblance. There seems as little similarity of tastes, or, if will allow me to say so, of character. You are, at least, greatly his junior."

you

"By ten years," answered the host.

"I should have said more."

"That is because the smoky place which he inhabits, and chuses to prefer to these breezy hills, to say nothing of the care and fatigue of waiting on other men's looks, have, I suppose, oldened him. But I have not seen him these fifteen years, and it is five more since I have been in London. In other respects we are good brothers: he writes me sometimes the news of

the town, regularly supplies me with the Gazette, and I supply him with game. I believe, however, he thinks me a mere country put, and as he will indubitably die in harness himself, is convinced that nobody can live happily out of it."

De Vere thought he did not by any means do justice to Sir William, who, he said, was a gentleman of great prudence, and highly esteemed by all parties.

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Why ay," said Mr. Flowerdale, "it is that prudence that always gave, or seemed to give, him the advantage over me, even more than his age. Our friends used to wish I could take a lesson from him, when I called London a prison which I should not like, though the king were my gaoler."

"But if he like it!" observed De Vere.

"I am answered," said Mr. Flowerdale: " a man can but be pleased, and we cannot, indeed ought not, to be all alike. And yet I cannot help sometimes thinking that we are not made to be wedded for better for worse to a toilsome office; nor do I wish to suppose that, as age advances, we may not be something better than one of those old politicians, who

• Chew on wisdom past,

And totter on in business to the last.'

Yes! yes! we are made for better things than this."

"And yet," said De Vere," as far as I have observed, (even already) it is a nice question whether a man of what we call trammels, when once fixed, can change for the better; at least he may make an ill exchange for a liberty which he does not know how to use."

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"That observation," said Flowerdale, looking at him, "is, with submission, what ought to be beyond your experience. But if true, (which I fear it is,) that happiness is little more than merely mechanical, there is this difference between the man who shakes off trammels to enjoy his mind, and him who totters on in business to the last,' that the one consults the dignity of his nature, and acts up to it, while the other reduces himself, at best, to contented mechanism. Take, for example, the man who makes his leisure busy by contemplation, and him who lives in such constant business as to have no leisure but for bodily refreshment. Each may be happy, but whose happiness is the nobler of the two? The one lives and converses with his God;the other with his club."

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