of occupation. It was the appropriate amusement, nay, often the support, of a true philosopher. There was nothing on which his fancy had ever fixed with truer pleasure. Besides, he knew all that had been ever said upon it by any body. Bacon, and Cowley, and Temple, and Lord Orford; the count, the chevalier, and the prior,* and the old Corycian of Virgil, were often quoted. and as often envied, whenever this natural and delightful art occurred to his imagination. Yet, in reality, of a garden Tremaine had no other idea than as a place to walk in, furnished with a terrace always ready for his steps, and full of sweet sights and sweet smells. But to watch, to assist, or even to understand the process of nature; to class roots and plants, to divide bulbs or gather seeds, or graft or to prune, never occurred to him, except as the troubles attendant on gardening. Botany was too finical for his full mind; and even Sir William Temple's pride in his peaches could never induce his attention to fruit-trees. All this, he said, was more properly the province of servants, who were paid for it, and who must necessarily understand it better; it was the mechanical part, and he left it to mechanics. The consequence was, that he often lounged from walk to walk, with a glazed and unobserving eye; and as every thing about him arose from the labours of others, he surveyed it with that total want of interest which usually attends other men's labour. It is to be recollected, that one of the motives for Tremaine's retiring was to render himself useful, and obtain influence in his country. This, if not a view to personal weight with his neighbours, of course placed him in the commission. To this he at first obliged himself to give some attention. But though Burn, and Williams, and the Statutes were always at hand, and were even sometimes consulted in a large and appropriate apartment, which he called the justice-room, their minutiæ discouraged, and their forms teased, by requiring more of his attention than he had ever thought necessary. * See the Spectacle de la Nature. His mind was always upon other things; his clerk lived too far off; and he not only blundered, but, had he been ever so correct, correctness in such trifling points could confer no honour, and therefore no satisfaction. Melcombe beat him out of the field in the estimation of the neighbourhood; and as to joining in a petty sessions, and dining with little esquires at a country inn, it filled him with horror. Once, and once only, he drove in his coach and four to the general quarter sessions, where he found many of his inferiors who eclipsed, and much noisy jollity which disgusted him. He did not repeat the visit. And now behold Tremaine, with all the advantages of fortune, education, and birth-with various talents, and an inquiring, and in many respects a powerful mind— with a generous heart, a high sense of honour, and in the vigour of his age! And yet, with all these, he not only was not, but could not be happy; and the causes of his unhappiness were not difficult to point out. An unbending, perhaps a too sensitive temper, had been originally left to itself, without any efforts being made to correct it; and a warm imagination had mistaken the ebullitions of fancy for the real and vivid impressions of natural disposition. He had indeed seen something almost like adversity; but it is not always true that adversity corrects :-too often it confirms our errors. And Tremaine falling suddenly upon prosperity without having profited by experience, basked in it, until he grew more and more sophisticated, and lost whatever ideas he had once possessed of the simplicity of nature. The only certainty he now felt was, that he was uneasy; and though he still told himself he loved retirement, and disliked the world as much as ever, it was evident that his life was irksome, and he wished to be relieved. Luckily, at this time he began to be ill. A slow feverishness hung constantly upon him, and by degrees tended to jaundice all things to his natural vision, as his mistakes about himself had already misrepresented them to his mental. He felt that something must be done. Call forth the greens, and wake the rising flowers; In more homely language, it was spring; and the spring is generally the signal for happiness. The birds, the animals, the lovely vegetation of the earth, obey with spontaneous gladness the pleasing call. But the spring brought no charms to Tremaine. Nine months had, in fact, languished on, without conferring upon him nine hours of that pure enjoyment which he had so confidently promised himself; and though the first principle of philosophy (so valuable that it is supposed to have required an oracle for its revelation) is to "Know thyself," yet that he and solitude were not formed for each other was a discovery he had still to make.. And yet he had frequently to observe people as solitary as himself, who seemed happy, although they had no books to engage them, no trains of thought to pursue. His shepherd passed whole days on the hills without languor or complaint, and without being ill; and the village cobler, in a stall near his gate, was so cheerful, that Tremaine not unfrequently stopt to observe him. There were moments, even, when, if he would have allowed it, he could have envied his lot. How long he would have continued to force nature in a way of life which it was evident he did not understand, is very doubtful; but luckily, as has been said, he was now seriously ill, and his illness obliged him to have recourse to a phy sician. Luckily, also, the physician was a very sensible man, and his friend as well as his physician. This gentleman soon found that his disease did not so much depend upon medicine, as a change of scene, or rather of life; and he was adroit enough to enforce his opinion without discovering it to his patient. In a word, having called upon Tremaine one morning, he found him in his closet, with at least half a score letters in the same hand unopened before him; and having observed upon the quantity of business he must have, to occasion so large a receipt of paper by one post, he was astonished to find from his patient (who very frank.y avowed it) that it was not the arrival of a single day, but the accumulation of as many posts as there were letters. Expressing surprise at their being unopened, it was increased by being told, that as they were all from his steward in the north, he had given way (engaged, he said, by other things) to an unwillingness to be broken in upon so frequently by such affairs, and had therefore reserved them for a rainy day, when one trouble might suffice for them all. It needed not the sagacity of his adviser to see at once that indolence was at the bottom of his patient's complaints; and according to the great maxim of his science, Causa remota tollitur effectus, he advised his instant perusal of every one of his letters. In vain the patient pleaded that he was too ill-the plea was not allowed; the letters were read, and, to his dismay, he discovered that from his delay in answering the first two or three packets, some affairs of serious consequence to his estates in Yorkshire were growing worse and worse, so as to require his almost immediate presence. The friendly and disinterested Dr. Asgill seized upon this decisive moment to enforce what he had sometimes before suggested in vain; and having now the plea of necessary business, and his pride being no longer affected by his departure from solitude, it was determined that within three days Tremaine should leave the spot chosen for his happiness, and visit, for a time at least, the seat where his ancestors had been happy. Accordingly, his barouche and four post-horses con veyed the feverish recluse to the scenes of his youth, those happy scenes, and that happy time, When nature pleas'd, for life itself was new, And the heart promis'd what the fancy drew. Το say that he was not struck, if not exhilarated by the busy and cheerful images which a journey through a flourishing and beautiful country in the month of May furnished, would be to suppose him more jaundiced than he really was. How he came to be jaundiced at all was what surprised and puzzled him: and his friendly physician, though his knowledge of the world, as well as of his art, made him very well understand it, was restrained by that knowledge from too openly explaining it. It was evening when he arrived at Woodington Hall, that ancient mansion where his father was born, and where he himself had passed his infancy. It would wrong him to say his pulse did not beat somewhat quicker as he beheld its crenelated towers and high chimnies, the latter in themselves containing materials for a moderate modern house. They rose loftily, amid still more lofty trees, now fresh clothed; and the lattices of many an ample window of the mansion played in the horizontal sun. Several workmen preparing to return home filled the great court, and saluted him as he drove up to the porch; and in some among them he thought he recognized, under their grey hairs, features he had known in his youth. "I will make acquaintance with these good people," said he, "to-morrow. He had not for a long time felt so much himself; certainly no hour at Belmont had given him half the satisfaction; and though the dread of the labours that awaited him, in the business he came upon, hung like a weight over him during the evening, he passed it with an alertness, in visiting the gardens without, and the chambers within, to which he had long been a stranger. |