by his inceffant anxiety and fatigue; and the terrors of banishment so oppreffed his mind, that he loft all his powers, and became, from the deep melancholy into which it plunged him, totally incapable of adopting juft fentiments, or pursuing spirited measures. By this weak and unmanly conduct he disgraced an event by which Providence. intended to render his glory complete. Undetermined where to go, or what to do, he lamented, with effeminate fighs and childish tears, that he could now no longer enjoy the luxuries of his fortune, the splendor of his rank, or the charms of his popularity. Weeping over the ruins of his magnificent manfion, which Clodius levelled with the ground, and groaning for the absence of his wife Terentia, whom he foon afterwards repudiated, hefuffered the deepest melancholy to seize upon his mind; became a prey to the most inveterate grief; complained with bitter anguish of wants, which, if supplied, would have afforded him no enjoyment; and acted, in fhort, fo ridiculously, that both his friends and his enemies concluded that adversity had deranged his mind. Cæfar beheld with secret and malignant pleasure, the man who had refused to act as his Lieutenant suffering under the scourge of Clodius. Pompey hoped that all sense of his ingratitude would be effaced by the contempt and derifion to which a benefactor, whom he had shamefully abandoned, thus meanly expofed expofed his character. Atticus himself, whofe mind was bent on magnificence and money, and who, by his temporizing talents, endeavoured to preserve the friendship of all parties without enlifting in any, blushed for the unmanly conduct of Cicero, and, in the cenforial ftyle of Cato, inftead of his own plaufible dialect, feverely reproached him for continuing fo meanly attached to his former fortunes. Solitude had no influence over a mind fo weak and depreffed as to turn the worft fide of every object to its view. He died, however, with greater heroifm than he lived. (c Approach, old foldier!" cried he, from his litter, to Pompilius Lanas, his former client and prefent murderer, " and if you have the courage, "take my life." "THESE inftances," fays Lord Bolingbroke, "fhew, that as a change of place, fimply con"fidered, can render no man unhappy, fo the "other evils which are objected to exile, either "cannot happen to wife and virtuous men, or, if "they do happen to them, cannot render them "miferable. Stones are hard, and cakes of ice are "cold, and all who feel them feel alike: but the good or the bad events which fortune brings (c upon us, are felt according to the qualities that "we, not they, poffefs. They are in themselves in"different and common accidents, and they ac 2 quire "quire ftrength by nothing but our vice or our "weakness. Fortune can difpenfe neither feli"city nor infelicity, unless we co-operate with "her. Few men who are unhappy under the lofs "of an eftate, would be happy in the poffeffion of "it; and thofe who deferve to enjoy the advantages which exile takes away, will not be un"happy when they are deprived of them." AN exile, however, cannot hope to fee his days glide quietly away in rural delights and philofophic repofe, except he has confcientiously difcharged thofe duties which he owed to the world, and given that example of rectitude to future ages, which every character exhibits who is as great after his fall, as he was at the moft brilliant period of his profperity. CHAPTER THE SEVENTH. THE ADVANTAGES OF SOLITUDE IN OLD AGE; AND ON THE BED OF DEATH. THE decline of life, and particularly the con dition of old age, derive from Solitude the pureft fources of uninterrupted enjoyment. Old age, when confidered as a period of comparative quietude and repose, as a serious and contemplative interval between a transitory existence and an approaching immortality, is, perhaps, the most agreeable condition of human life: a condition to which Solitude affords a fecure harbour against those fhattering tempefts to which the frail bark of man is continually exposed in the short, but dangerous, voyage of the world; a harbour from whence he may fecurely view the rocks and quickfands which threatened his destruction, and which he has so happily escaped. MEN are by nature difpofed to investigate the various properties of diftant objects before they think of contemplating their own characters: like modern travellers, who visit foreign counO tries tries before they are acquainted with their own. But prudence will exhort the young, and experience teach the aged, to conduct themselves on very different principles; and both the one and the other, will find that Solitude and felf-examination are the beginning and the end-of true wifdom. O! loft to virtue, loft to manly thought, Who think it Solitude to be alone. Communion fweet! communion large and high! The levity of youth, by this communion large and high, will be repreffed, and the depreffion which fometimes accompanies old age entirely removed. An unceafing fucceffion of gay hopes, fond defires, ardent wishes, high delights, and unfounded fancies, form the character of our early years; but those which follow are marked with melancholy and increasing forrows. A mind, however, that is invigorated by observation and experience, remains dauntlefs and unmoved amidst both the profperities and adverfities of life. He who is no longer forced to exert his powers, and who, at an early period of his life, has well ftudied the manners of men, will com |