SOLITUDE. 1. THEY are never alone, who are accompanied with noble thoughts. Remark. The illustrious Scipio, whose "noble thoughts," like a thousand livery'd ́ angels lacquey'd him, used to say, "I never am less alone than when alone." 2. Solitary life is prone to affections. 3. Avoidings of company do but make the passions more violent when they meet with fit subjects. Remark. Few objects being present to distract attention, all tends to the point that may happen to excite interest. Nothing interrupts reflection; and reflection, by repeating the image, deepens it in the heart, till to erase it is impossible. The story of Petrarch, shews the maddening effects of solitude upon lovers. 4. Vehement love of solitariness is but a glorious title to idleness. In action, a man does not only benefit himself, but he benefits others. God would not have delivered the soul into a body which had arins and legs, the instruments of doing, but that it were intended the mind should employ them; and that the mind should best know its own good or evil, by practice: which knowledge is the only way to increase the one, and correct the other. Remark. When solitude is sought out as a place for the mind to dream in, and not to arouse itself and form plans for future action, it is nothing better than a tomb loaded with lying epitaphs: "Here rests the Great- -False marble! Where? "Nothing but sordid dust lies here." Alike are the pretensions of the whimsical inhabitant of solitary places: the man is buried alive; useless to his fellow-creatures; and fit only to "vegetate and rot," the burthened earth groans to cover him. Zimmerman has spread a specious lustre over this subject, and, by the magic of his painting, hath turned many a silly head into the affectation of solitude. His enthusiasm may be contagious: but all are not like him. fitted to walk the plain with Innocence and Contemplation joined! All are not learned who put on the doctor's gown: many assume abstraction, but few meditate; for it is an easy matter to look grave, and a task of labour to become wise: the reputation of a thing is in general more valued than the reality.Though Zimmerman declared his love of solitude, he did not mean an ostentatious display of his own fitness to fill it his mind was a little commonwealth in itself, always at work for the public weal, and solitude was his study; or rather, retirement; for that is the proper name of the seclusion he eulogises. His retreat was animated by the graces of connubial and filial love, and all the social endearments of friendship: these blessings are not the guests of solitude; she dwells, like the hermit of the desart, alone. 5. Eagles we see fly alone; and they are but sheep which always herd together. Remark. But it is to fly that eagles leave their mates; not to immure themselves in the crannies of rocks, or bury themselves under ground, amongst the ruins of a charnel-house. Newton shut out the world, that he might range through the universe: Locke closed his door on the crowd of busy bodies, that he might open his soul to the bright Intelligences who visited him from above: and Milton traversed the midnight woods of Ludlow, to mark -the spiritual creatures that walk the earth, "Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.” Such men, when they withdraw from society, go on heavenly errands. Genius would want one of the essentials towards its perfection, if it were ignorant of its destination: it knows its own worth and its own uses: it is a minister of the king of kings; and to fulfil its duty, that duty must be diligently studied. The great benefactors of mankind, (they who teach men to be wise, virtuous, and happy;) when they have viewed the diseased multitude, usually retire to consider the cases and the remedies: the wound is in the soul, and the secret of cure must be sought in the physician's own bosom. He goes into the depths of solitude, |