other, which might put a period to such wandering inclinations. Hereupon
I bought a little farm in the county of Bedford, with a resolution to
move thither; upon this there was a pretty convenient house surrounded
with land, very capable of improvement, which suited my temper, as to
planting, managing, and cultivating. Nor was I long before I entered
upon my new settlement, having bought ploughs, harrows, carts, waggons,
horses, cows, and sheep; so that I now led the life of a country
gentleman, and as happy in my retirement as the greatest monarch in the
world. And what made me think my happiness the greater was, that I was
in the middle state of life, which my father had so often recommended,
much resembling the felicity of a rural retirement, which is elegantly
described by the poet in these lines:

_Free from all vices, free from care,
Age has no pain, and youth no snare._

But, in the midst of this my happiness, I was suddenly plunged in the
greatest sorrow that I could possibly endure; for when I least expected
it, my dear and tender wife was forced to submit to the irresistable
power of Death, leaving this transitory life for a better. It is
impossible for me to express the beauties of her mind, or the loveliness
of her person; neither can I too much lament her loss, which my latest
breath shall record; her influence was greater over me, than the powers
of my own reason, the importunities of friends, the instructions of a
father, or the melting tears of a tender and disconsolate mother; in a
word, she was the spirit of all my affairs, and the centre of my
enterprizes. But now, since the cruel hand of Death had closed my
dearest's eyes, I seemed in my thoughts a stranger to the world; my
privy counsellor being gone, I was like a ship without a pilot, that
could only run before the wind. And when I looked around me in this busy
world, one party labouring for bread, and the other squandering away
their estates; this put me in mind how I had lived in my little kingdom,
where both reason and religion dictated to me, that there was something
that certainly was the reason and end of life, which was far superior to
what could be hoped for on this side the grave. My country delights were
now as insiped and dull, as music and science to those who have neither
taste nor ingenuity. In short, resolving to leave off house-keeping, I
left my farm, and in a few months returned to London.

But neither could that great city, so