Milton; out of doors, who ever felt alone that heard

the nightingale,

'Warbling at eve when all the woods are still?'

"Ah! those still woods! To a man of contemplation, what is there in the most brilliant scenes, the silken sheen, the jewels rare, the excitement of the royal feast for Persia won,' to compare one single moment with the pure and happy feelings which an evening walk in them produces? But he who can thus walk, and love to watch the sinking day, and is soothed by the twilight, must be innocent. Solitude indeed is no place for the wicked."

on.

"I beseech you," said I, seeing him pause, “go

"Well," proceeded he, "to come to something of a lower flight-if you are a sportsman, I need not talk to you of shooting, with no companion but your dog. If you have any little handycraft arts, if merely for amusement, but especially if for purposes of utility, where can your interests cease? You may be a carpenter with your tool chest; a turner with your lathe; you may make baskets, weave nets, knit garters, or twist whiplashes like Will Wimble; or, if fond of the politer arts, you may try to paint like Sir George Beaumont.

"What shall I say if you are a farmer? Go to your Virgil on the employments of his Agricola, when confined to the house in bad weather, which is a sort of solitude.

'Multa forent quæ mox cœlo properanda sereno,
Maturare datur: durum procudit arator

Vomeris obtusi dentem, cavat arbore lintres,

Aut pecori signum, aut numeros impressit acervis.
Exacuunt alii vallos, furcasque bicornes.' *

Here is a picture of employment for you, which must for ever banish the vapours. We see the honest man in his cottage or barn, perhaps hear him whistling while sharpening his stakes or marking his sacks."

"A pleasing assemblage," observed I; "but will these fill up the time of the man of education-he who shuns vacuity of mind as his worst enemy ?

"Have you not answered yourself,” returned he shrewdly," when you suppose him a man of education? I began with an uneducated man, because most difficult to provide for. Let in mind, books of science, natural history, polite literature, moral philosophy, and, above all, religion, and your man of retirement is amply provided for."

"By religion," asked I, "do you mean devotion, or the study of divinity?"

"O! both, both," replied he, with some fervour.

66

My reason for asking," continued I, "is an interested one. For though I have always found questions in divinity, young as I am, more exciting than all others, yet a layman seems to me to be so much in * Thus paraphrased by Dryden:

'But when cold weather and continued rain
The lab'ring husband in his house restrain,
Let him forecast his work with timely care,
Which else is huddled when the skies are fair;

Or hollow trees for boats, or number o'er
His sacks, or measure his increasing store;
Or sharpen stakes,' &c.

need of assistance, that he can do little without it, and I have therefore been glad to take refuge in authority, and believe what I have been told by my Bible, and my betters, in their mode of expounding it, without examination."

"It was only becoming at your age,” said he, “and comfortable to every one, particularly those who are busy with the world. As we advance, however, towards that period when the near view of futurity becomes ten times more interesting, and a thousand times more awful, religion is every thing; while, important as I have described them, all other things are nothing. An inquiring mind then seeks convictions of its own, and the power to do this is the pre-eminent and almost exclusive advantage of solitude. Hence, that shrewd Paley, whom I cannot too often quote (and here Mr. Manners took down his work), has this emphatic passage:-'A man who is in earnest in his endeavours after the happiness of a future state has, in this respect, an advantage over all the world. For he has constantly before his eyes an object of supreme importance, productive of perpetual engagement and activity, and of which the pursuit (which can be said of no pursuit besides) lasts him to his life's end.*""

Mr. Manners then told me, with an air of great satisfaction, that he had already derived from his retreat, and the opportunities it had given him for uninterrupted meditation, benefits which were incalculable,

* Moral Philosophy, 1, 34.

and which all the power and wealth in the world could never balance.

"It has already," said he, "restored me to the confidence necessary for the sweetest and most interesting of all enjoyments-the power, without the alloy of miserable doubt, of conversing with your God. Ever indeed, like you, from my youth up, though not always with the same unction, have I felt the force and beauty of those lines of our most serious poet :

'A soul in commune with her God is heaven;
Feels not the tumults and the shocks of life,
The whirls of passion, or the strokes of heart.'

'A deity believed is joy begun;
A deity adored is joy advanced;
A deity beloved is joy matured.'

"This, however, with the most satisfied minds, is sadly broken in upon by the distractions of the world, whether through business or dissipation. For, let him be ever so devoutly disposed from natural bias, a man absorbed by ambition or business has not the time, and a man of pleasure has not the disposition, to seek out his Creator, and converse with his attributes. But if he is not so disposed, or so biassed; if his mind is unhappily wavering in a labyrinth of uncertainty and contending arguments; in short, if it is not made up what to believe and what to reject, on subjects paramount to all others in the heart of a thinking man, such a man, while immersed in the world, can have no hope of ever seeing land. He will

* Young.

never be cheered by the happy sound of Italiam, Italiam.'

I fully assented to this proposition, and was pleased with its classical allusion, when Mr. Manners

went on:

"Crowns and sceptres, and the utmost refinements of luxury, nay, the most dazzling splendours of fame, sink into absolute nothingness in comparison with this. In the hey-day and buoyancy of youth, indeed, and the struggles which even duty imposes upon our manhood in its meridian, we are too often careless, and, perhaps, think it pardonable to neglect the subjects which I have called paramount to all others. As our friend, the brave and natural Trim, explained his religious neglects: When a soldier has passed a whole day up to his knees in water in the trenches, -perhaps without his dinner-watching in the face of the enemy, he has little time to say his prayers.

"But there is a time for all things, and he is fortunate, who, if he feels the want of self, or other instruction, and that the seductions of a dissipated or tumultuous, and therefore a thoughtless life, prevent him from righting his vessel and getting into port—he is fortunate, I say, who can retire from that life to seek after truth, as I have done, without disturbance."

Mr. Manners then went on to tell me that though his early youth, with no other helps than the common instruction derived from church and catechism, was marked by a belief in all the great tenets of religion, because, like me, he never had a thought of questioning them, and was happy in what he might call his