time, we
talked principally upon books, and I observed that those which my
host seemed to know the best were of the elegant and poetical order of
philosophers, who, more fascinating than deep, preach up the blessings
of a solitude which is useless, and a content which, deprived of
passion, excitement, and energy, would, if it could ever exist, only be
a dignified name for vegetation.

"So," said he, "when, the dinner being removed, we were left alone with
that substitute for all society,--wine! "so you are going to town: in
four hours more you will be in that great focus of noise, falsehood,
hollow joy, and real sorrow. Do you know that I have become so wedded
to the country that I cannot but consider all those who leave it for the
turbulent city, in the same light, half wondering, half compassionating,
as that in which the ancients regarded the hardy adventurers who left
the safe land and their happy homes, voluntarily to expose themselves in
a frail vessel to the dangers of an uncertain sea? Here, when I look
out on the green fields and the blue sky, the quiet herds basking in the
sunshine or scattered over the unpolluted plains, I cannot but exclaim
with Pliny, 'This is the true Movoetov!' this is the source whence flow
inspiration to the mind and tranquillity to the heart! And in my love
of Nature--more confiding and constant than ever is the love we bear to
women--I cry with the tender and sweet Tibullus,--

"'Ego composito securus acervo
Despiciam dites, despiciamque famem.'"*

* "Satisfied with my little hoard, I can despise wealth, and fear not
hunger."

"These," said I, "are the sentiments we all (perhaps the most restless
of us the most passionately) at times experience. But there is in our
hearts some secret but irresistible principle that impels us, as a
rolling circle, onward, onward, in the great orbit of our destiny; nor
do we find a respite until the wheels on which we move are broken--at
the tomb."

"Yet," said my host, "the internal principle you speak of can be
arrested before the grave,--at least stilled and impeded. You will smile
incredulously, perhaps (for I see you do not know who I am), when I tell
you that I might once have been a monarch, and that obscurity seemed
to me more enviable than empire; I resigned the occasion: the tide of
fortune rolled onward, and left me safe but solitary and forsaken upon
the dry land. If you wonder at my choice, you will wonder still more
wh