varied and so delightful are all these, that a votary to temperate solitude may triumphantly enquire, whether there is not a pleasure and a consolation in it, than which nothing can be more delightful ;-since they fade with no season. Is there a melancholy, which they do not soothe, or a sorrow, they do not relieve? Yes, my dear Lelius, retirement and a love of letters have charms to recommend them, far more transcendant than the vapid nonsense of a harsh, ignorant, and intemperate world.-Quit it therefore !-As to myself!—though I am aware, that the occasional contrast of real life is necessary to give us a goût for the more substantial enjoyments of a retired one; knowing that the world has little of satisfaction, and still less of stability, unless I enjoy the opportunity of mixing in a society, that is suited to me, far better is it for my happiness to live alone! -Solitude is frequently "best society;" let me, then, enjoy my books, my garden, my wife, and my children, in a quiet corner, in the environs of a large city; and let me have the honour of being classed with that enviable order of men,

whom the world

Call idle ;-but who, justly, in return,

Esteems that busy world an idler too.

"Nature," says Cicero," abhors solitude;" and many an ingenious argument has been adduced to prove, that a lover of solitude is a being, totally divested of the common sympathies of humanity. Among my papers, however, I find a remarkable account of a solitaire, that goes far towards invalidating this opinion. It is a verbal abridgment of a paper, published in a periodical work, about the year 1781. The name of this solitary was ANGUS ROY FLETCHER, who lived all his life in a farm at Glenorchy. He obtained his livelihood principally by fishing and hunting. His dog was his sole attendant; his gun and dirk his constant companions. At a distance from social life, his residence was in the wildest and most inaccessible parts of the lofty mountains, which separate the country

of Glenorchy from that of Rannoch. In the midst of these wilds he built his hut, and passed the spring, the summer, the autumn, and the principal part of the winter. He possessed a few goats, which browsed among the clifts. These were his sole property; and he desired no more. While his goats grazed among the rocks and heaths, he ranged the hills and the banks of rivulets, in quest of game and fish. In the evening he returned to his goats and led them to his solitary hut. There he milked them with his own hands; and after taking his supper of the game or fish he had caught, and which he dressed after his own manner, he laid himself down in the midst of his dogs and his goats. He desired to associate with neither men nor women; but if a casual stranger approached his hut, he was generous and open, hospitable and charitable, even to his last morsel. Whatever he possessed he cheerfully bestowed upon his guest; at atime, too, when he knew not where to procure the next meal for himself.

When the severity of the winter obliged him to descend to the village, he entered with evident reluctance into society; where no one thought as he did; and where no one lived or acted after his manner. To relieve himself from all intercourse with his species, as much as possible, he went every morning before the dawn of day in search of game; and never returned till night, when he crept to bed without seeing any one. With all this, he dressed after the manner of a finished coxcomb! His belt, bonnet and dirk, fitted him with a wild and affected elegance; his hair, which was naturally thick, was tied with a silken and variegated cord; his look was lofty, his gait stately, his spirit to a degree haughty and high-minded: and were he starving for want, he would have asked no one for the slightest morsel of food! He was truly the solitary man and yet was he hospitable, charitable, and humane.

General Boon seems to have had an ardent love of deep seclusion. He was principally instrumental in the first settle

ment of Kentucky; and preferred the wildest solitudes to reside in. The country, in which he had fixed himself, however, having become gradually peopled, he retired beyond the Missouri. Population soon began even there and at the age of seventy he removed two hundred miles beyond the abode of civilised man.

:

About the year 1814, a strange person was occasionally seen in Walston fields, about three miles from Carnwath, in the county of Lanark. He appeared with great emaciation of figure and countenance; and from his dress and general appearance seemed to have seen better days. He avoided all intercourse was never seen in the day: and only occasionally early in the mornings. The peasantry were not a little surprised and even alarmed at such a circumstance: and at length watched him when it was discovered that he had taken up his residence in a small cave, formed by Nature in a large hill in the neighbourhood. The curiosity of the country was increased by this circumstance: but no one dared to enter his habitation: and after a time he ceased to be talked of. At length, on the 11th of April 1820, as a shepherd passed near the cave, he heard a deep groan: and upon advancing nearer he discovered him lying near the mouth of the cave, in the last agonies of death. The shepherd ran to the nearest house to procure assistance; and returning to the spot found that the unfortunate man had breathed his last, during his absence. On entering the cave, some heath was observed in a corner, arrayed in the form of a bed; some straw, from which, it was evident from the chaff, he had extracted corn; also some raw potatoes and turnips. A small leathern parcel laid on the floor, which upon investigation was found to contain several letters, so defaced, that only one of them was in the smallest degree legible. It was kept with two one pound notes, and wrapped up with great care; but it had neither date, signature, nor direction. Of this letter the following is a literal copy:

"Amice, conscientia nostrorum factorum pectus meum deturbat: -Vivere non possum : Mori non audeo-Insanus sum.- -Si in surore meo mortem mihi non consciscam, certe factum nostrum vulgabor, igitur si tibi vita dulcis sit―fuge, et ne mecum peris.-Vale, si adhuc possis esse beatus, sis beatus-iterum vale, longe vale."

Had this unfortunate being remained in society, his mind had, doubtless, recovered its tone, compass and authority.

Man, animated by the common impulses of his nature, can enjoy nothing to effect alone. Some one must lean upon his arm; listen to his observations; point out secret beauties ; and become, as it were, a partner in his feelings, or his impressions are comparatively dull and spiritless. Pleasures are increased in proportion as they are participated; as roses, inoculated with roses, grow double by the process. Were it to shower down gold, we should scarcely welcome the gift, had we no friend to congratulate us on our good fortune. All the colours and forms of the natural world would fade before our sight; and every gratification pall upon our senses. How beautifully is this triumph of social feeling depicted in that passage of the Paradise Lost, where Eve addresses Adam, in language, worthy, not only of the golden age, but of Paradise itself!

But neither breath of morn, when she ascends
With charm of earliest birds; nor rising sun
On this delightful land; nor herb, fruit, flower,
Glistering with dew; nor fragrance after showers;
Nor grateful evening mild; nor silent Night,

With this her solemn bird; nor walk by moon,
Nor glistering star-light, without thee is sweet.

Antisthenes, in reply to one of his scholars, who had inquired what philosophy had taught him, replied, “the art of living by myself." Retirement, my Lelius, does indeed enable us to derive happiness from ourselves, in the same manner as the sun, shining from its own centre, is indebted to no other globe for its splendour or its heat. "Happiness," said Spero Speroni to Francis Duke of Rovero," is not to be measured by

duration; but by quality." Beholding systems, unbeheld by common eyes; preferring his own society to that of the weak, the ignorant, and the worthless; and thereby living in a world of his own creating, the lettered recluse (to whom a well-furnished library is "a dukedom large enough"), indifferent even to the report of fame, "that last infirmity of noble minds!" becomes almost invincible: for the world to him is a prison, and solitude a paradise.

To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,
Where things, that own not man's dominion, dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been ;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock, that never needs a fold;
Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;

But 'midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men,

To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess,

And roam along, the world's tir'd denizen,

With none to bless us, none whom we can bless;

This is to be alone: THIS, THIS IS SOLITUDE-BYRON.

Such, also, were the sentiments of Epictetus: but solitude, with all its advantages, is only beneficial to the wise and the good; since schemes of rapine may be there engendered, as well as plans of beneficence. If Numa retired to one of the deepest recesses of Etruria, to digest his code of jurisprudence; Mahomet, in the silence and solitude of Mount Hara, shunning all intercourse with men, first formed the conception of deluding the manners and imaginations, of mankind.

To men of weak and unenlightened minds, too, retirement is productive of fatal results. That is,-to men, who, like the pholas, have a body in proportion to their house; and whose minds have no power to stretch beyond the limit of their shells. To them retirement is but another name for obscurity: a condition, mortifying to those, who have never acquainted themselves with the world; and grateful only to