ticularly of philosophic man; and he was often known to wonder at the general, but what he called the unreal, cheerfulness of many of his inferiors, who had ready-made rules for the employment of their time, and were forced to rise, eat, and sleep as others commanded. If there was a command in the case, he said, he knew no difference as to whether it was imposed by one's-self or by others.

At the moment we speak of, after sleeping little, he arose late, and complained of indisposition. This was always a reason for lying long; but this did not cause the indisposition to go off. A medical friend had assured him, indeed, that his system was wrong, and that in these cases, if he rose early and tasted the morning air, it would do him more good than all the drugs in the world. In vain !-His imagination told him this was beautiful in poetry, but, like most of the simple pleasures, it was only there that it was beautiful.

Hence it was unusually late when he appeared at breakfast, where his valet informed him that his steward had been in waiting all the morning, to take his orders, and give in his accounts.

These accounts were of considerable magnitude, and the steward attended at the very moment by his express order, sent before he left town; one of his resolutions being, by a prompt and decisive exertion, to put an end to a complicated business, which by a

large arrear had fallen into difficulties, and which in London, he said, he had neither time nor patience to unravel.

His valet also informed him that his principal bailiff, who presided over a farm of a thousand acres, which he had taken into his own hands, waited, at the same time, to make report and take directions.

*

!

"that I'm always

I've no head for

"It's very vexatious," said he, indisposed when these men come. figures just now; nor can I understand farm reports, without being an eye-witness."

Wilson, the steward, was therefore appointed the next day, and Nutting, the bailiff, was ordered to wait till his master should know whether he could ride or not.

The bailiff, it is true, ventured to propose a remonstrance, or rather petition, that the inspection might be deferred, as it would take some hours, and he was to meet a grazier by appointment, at Northampton, who was ready to contract for some cattle, which it had hitherto been difficult to dispose of, and which were now there for sale. But Monsieur Dupuis refused to take any such message from a man whom he considered and often called un tas de fumier, in the same spirit as he bestowed upon Wilson the epithet of cue de plomb. He indeed indignantly told Nutting, that his master could not wait the time of

a grazier. The cattle, therefore, were not sold, and the bailiff remained in attendance.

The elegance of Tremaine's breakfast did not tempt him to eat; but this he laid upon his feverish night, without much inquiry how he came by it. He said, however, he would read it off, and enjoy himself immediately in that learned retirement, for which in London he had so long sighed. He therefore proceeded to the library.

Arrived in the library, Tremaine feasted his eyes with the sight of all the admirable contrivances of desk, cushion, &c., by which men who profess reading endeavour to court themselves into a liking for what they profess. He had done this for some time, and given much praise to his upholsterer, as well as his bookseller, before he recollected that he had made a small omission, in not having settled any particular subject to which he might give his mind. But as he was in no very good humour with the world, moral philosophy was his ostensible aim; and the ancient philosophers, in splendid editions, all lying before him, with a sensation of some pleasure he opened a Laertius.

"It is delightful," said he, "to pursue the varieties in which these men displayed their wisdom; to contemplate and unravel with them the nature of man!" He turned over the pages for some time, and read something of several very contending systems: but

though occupied, and therefore comparatively happy, he hurried over, rather than examined, the tenets that were explained; found fault, as he had done an hundred times, with all that was said of virtue or developed of nature, by Pythagoras, or Plato, or Epicurus; thought Aristotle not sufficiently precise; and ended, as he had often done before, in the satisfaction of scepticism.

His conclusion was not pleasant, though he had taken such pains to come to it. Carneades, and Cicero," said he,

"Arcesilaus, and closing the book,

"were certainly right, and the only true thing on earth is, that there is no such thing as truth." At the same time, it did not escape him that he had not quite consumed three hours in coming to this conclusion, and that the systems which he then condemned remained exactly in the same state of superficial examination in which he had left them many a time before, promising his own mind to return to them when he had more leisure. In particular, it did not escape him that all the modern theories, founded on a more exact knowledge of nature, and a more clear revelation of all that is held sacred by man, had been entirely, and almost purposely avoided. His eye grew a little bilious as he thought of this, and glanced cursorily over the volumes of Boyle, Butler, Sherlock, and Clark, which were ranged in their places on his ample shelves. "I have not

time at present," said he, " to push this subject, but I shall have full leisure for it while in this happy retreat. Leisure? (continued he, looking at a Milton that lay open before him) yes! 'retired leisure'

That in trim gardens takes his pleasure.'

This room is, after all, too dark, and the weather is close. Give me sweet poetry and a garden! these are at least more certain in their impressions. I will pass the rest of the morning in the alcove !" At these words he left the house by a private way, with a Milton under his arm; meaning, as he said, not merely to read, but to study the greater poem of that author once more; a thing he had not done for fifteen years. His finger, however, remained at the passage in the Penseroso, which had involuntarily, as it were, caused his last sensation. It was therefore by no means unnatural, before he underwent the task of taxing his imagination in heaven or hell, to rest a little in the sweet fields of familiar description, which first brought the author to his mind. In a word, he had read over the Penseroso, and part of the Allegro, when he found, though his faculties of vision read, his thoughts wandered, and instead of the tale of the shepherd, the song of the lark, and Thestyllis and Phillis, both his eye and his ear were in the House of Commons.

"Strange!" said he, "that what once could