and his life happy; and Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, Protestants, and every really religious class of men, will unite in acts of sincere benevolence and universal peace. No austere, gloomy and dispiriting duties; no irrational penances and unnatural mortification, will be enjoined; no intolerant cruelties be inflicted; no unsocial institutions established; no rites of solitary selfishness be required; but reason and religion, in divine perfection, will reassume their reign, and unaffected and sincere devotion will occupy every mind; the Almighty will be worshiped in spirit and in truth; and we shall be convinced that the wicked "are like the troubled sea when it can not rest; but that the work of righteousness is peace; and the effect of righteousness quietude and assurance forever." To effect this, a rational retirement from the tumults of the world will be occasionally necessary, in order to commune with our own hearts, and be still, and to dispose our minds to such a train of thinking, as shall prepare us, when the giddy whirl of life is finished, for the society of more exalted spirits Oh! would mankind but make fair truth their guide, And force the helm from prejudice and pride, Were once these maxims fix'd, that God's our friend, Virtue our good, and happiness our end, How soon must reason o'er the world prevail, And error, fraud and superstition fail! None would hereafter, then, with groundless fear, None would fierce zeal for piety mistake, CHAPTER XII. OF THE DANGER OF IDLENESS IN SOLITUDE. IDLENESS is truly said to be the root of all evil; and solitude certainly encourages in the generality of its votaries this baneful disposition. Nature has so framed the character of man, that his happiness essentially depends on his passions being properly interested, his imagination busied, and his faculties employed; but these engagements are seldom found in the vacant scenes and tedious hours of retirement from the world, except by those who have acquired the great and happy art of furnishing their own amusements; an art, which, as we have already shown, can never be learnt in the irrational solitude of caves and cells. The idleness which solitude is so apt to induce, is dangerous in proportion to the natural strength, activity and spirit of the mind; for it is observed that the highest characters are frequently goaded by that restlessness which accompanies leisure, to acts of the wildest outrage and greatest enormity. The ancient legislators were so conscious that indolence, whether indulged in solitude or in society, is the nurse of civil commotion, and the chief instigator of moral turpitude, that they wisely framed their laws to prevent its existence. Solon observing that the city was filled with persons who assembled from all parts on account of the great security in which the people live in Attica, that the country withal was poor and barren, and being conscious that merchants, who traffic by sea, do not use to transport their goods where they can have nothing in exchange, turned the attention of the citizens to manufactures; and for this purpose made a law, that he who was three times convicted of idleness, should be deemed infamous; that no son should be obliged to maintain his father if he had not taught him a trade; that trades should be accounted honorable; and that the council of the Areopagus should examine into every man's means of living, and chastise the idle with the greatest severity. Draco conceived it so necessary to prevent the prevalency of a vice to which man is by nature prone, and which is so destructive to his character, and ruinous to his manners, that he punished idleness with death. The tyrant Pisistratus, as Theophrastus relates, was so convinced of the importance of preventing idleness among his subjects, that he made a law against it, which produced at once industry in the country, and tranquillity in the city. Pericles, who, in order to relieve Athens from a number of lazy citizens, whose lives were neither employed in virtuous actions, nor guarded from guilt by habits of industry, planted colonies in Chersonesus, Naxos, Andros, Thrace and even in Italy, and sent them thither; for this sagacious statesman saw the danger of indulging this growing vice, and wisely took precautions to prevent it. Nothing, indeed, contributes more essentially to the tranquillity of a nation, and to the peaceful demeanor of its inhabitants, than those artificial wants which luxury introduces; for, by creating a demand for the fashionable articles, they engage the attention, and employ the hands of a multitude of manufacturers and artificers, who, if they were left in that restless indolence which the want of work creates, would certainly be unhappy themselves, and in all probability would be fomenting mischief in the minds of others. To suspend, only for one week, the vast multitudes that are employed in the several mechanical trades and manufactories in Great Britain, would be to run the risk of involving the metropolis of that great, flourishing and powerful country once more in flames; for it would be converting the populace into an aptly disposed train of combustible matter, but a which being kindled by the least spark of accidental enthusiasm, by the heat of political faction, or, indeed, by their own internal fermentation, would explode into the most flagrant enormities. Nature, it is said, abhors a vacuum; and this old peripatetic principle may be properly applied to the intellect, which will embrace any thing, however absurd or criminal, rather than be wholly without an object. The same author also observes, that every man may date the predominance of those desires that disturb his life, and contaminate his conscience, from some unhappy hour when too much leisure exposed him to their incursions; for that he has lived with little observation, either on himself or others, who does not know, that to be idle is to be vicious. "Many writers of eminence in physic," continues this eminent writer, whose works not only disclose his general acquaintance with life and manners, profound knowledge of human nature, "have laid out their diligence upon the consideration of those distempers to which men are exposed by particular states of life, and very learned treatises have been produced upon the maladies of the camp, the sea and the mines. There are, indeed, few employments which a man accustomed to academical inquiries and medical refinements, would not find reason for declining, as dangerous to health, did not his learning or experience inform him, that almost every occupation, however inconvenient or formidable, is happier and safer than a life of sloth. The necessity of action is not only demonstrable from the fabric of the body, but evident from observation of the universal practice of mankind; who for the preservation of health in those whose rank or wealth exempts them from the necessity of lucrative labors, have invented sports and diversions, though not of equal use to the world with manual trades, yet of equal fatigue to those who practice them, and differing only from the drudgery of the husbandman or manufacturer, as they are acts of choice, and therefore performed without the painful sense of compul |