Numb. 7. Tuesday, April 10, 1750.
O qui perpetuâ mundum ratione gubernas,
Terrarum cœlique sator!
Disjice terrenæ nebulas & pondera molis,
Atque tuo splendore mica! Tu namque serenum,
Tu requies tranquilla piis. Te cernere, finis,
Principium, vector, dux, semita, terminus, idem.Boethius.
O thou whose pow'r o'er moving worlds presides,
Whose voice created, and whose wisdom guides,
On darkling man in pure refulgence shine,
And cheer the clouded mind with light divine.
'Tis thine alone to calm the pious breast
With silent confidence and holy rest;
From thee, great God, we spring, to thee we tend,
Path, motive, guide, original, and end.
THE love of Retirement has, in all ages, adhered closely to those minds, which have been most enlarged by knowledge or elevated by genius. Those who enjoyed every thing generally supposed to confer happiness, have been forced to seek it in the shades of privacy. Though they possessed both power and riches, and were, therefore, surrounded by men, who considered it as their chief interest to remove from them every thing that might offend their ease or interrupt their pleasure, they have soon felt the languors of satiety, and found themselves unable to pursue the race of life without frequent respirations of intermediate solitude.
To produce this disposition nothing appears requisite but a quick sensibility, and active imagination; for, though not devoted to virtue or science, the man, whose faculties enable him to make ready comparisons of the present with the past, will find such a constant recurrence of the same pleasures
