CHAP. XV. Dangers and advantages of retirement. laws; to contract, with a narrowness of thinking, an impatience of opposition. Yet, while we grow peremptory in our decis Ir some prefer retirement as an emanci- ions, we are, at the same time, liable to indipation from troublesome duties rather than Vidual influence; whereas, in the world, the as a scene of improvement, others chuse it injurious influence of one counsellor is soon as a deliverance from restraint, and as the counteracted by that of another; and if, surest mode of indulging their inclinations from the collision of opposite sentiments, we by a life of freedom; not a freedom from do not strike out truth, we experience, at the dangers of the world, but of following least, the benefit of contradiction. If those their own will. While we continue in the with whom we associate are of an inferior active world, while our idleness is animated education and cast of manners, we shall inwith bustle, decorated with splendor, and sensibly lower our standard, thinking it suffidiversified with variety, we cheer our erro- ciently high, if it be above theirs, till we imneous course with the promise of some day perceptibly sink to their level. The author escaping from it; but when we sit down in saw, very early in life, an illustration of our retreat, unprovided with the well-cho- these remarks, in a person who had figured sen materials of which true enjoyment is in the ranks of literature. He was a scholalone compounded, or without proposing to ar and a poet Disappointed in his ambidedicate our retirement to the obtaining tious views of rising in the church, a prothem, we are almost in a more hopeless con- fession for which he was little calculated, he dition than when we lived without reflection took refuge in a country parsonage. Here in the world. We were then looking for he affected to make his fate his choice. On ward to the privacy we now enjoy, as to a Sundays he shot over the beads of the infescene of mental profit. We had in prospect rior part of his audience, without touching a point which, if ever attained, would be to the hearts of the better informed; and, durus the beginning of a new life, a post from ing the week, paid himself for the world's which we should start in a nobler race.ucglect, by railing at it. He grew to disBut the point is attained, and the end is neg-like polished society, for which he had been lected. We are set down in our ultimate well qualified. He spent his mornings in position. writing elegies on the contempt of the world, or odes on the delights of retirement, and his evenings in the lowest sensuality with the most vulgar and illiterate of his neighbours. But retirement, from which we promised ourselves so much, has produced no change, except from the idleness of tumult to that of eunui in one sex, and from levity to apathy in the other. The active life which we had Another danger is that of aspiring to be promised to turn into contemplative life is come the sun of our little system, since the no improvement, if a gay frivolity is only love of popularity is not exclusively attached transformed into a dull vacuity. In the to public situations. In the world, indeed, world we were not truly active if we did little if there be not a real, there must at least be good; in retirement we are not contempla- a spurious merit to procure it, whereas, tive, if contemplation is not exercised to the when there are no competitors, it is easy to best purposes. It is in vain that we retire be popular; to be admired by the uncultivafrom great affairs, if our hearts are stuffed ted, and flattered by the dependent, may be with such as are insignificant. There is less the attainment of the most moderately gifted. hope of a change in the mind, because there Let us not, therefore, judge of ourselves by is no probability of a change in the circum- acclamations, which would equally follow the stances with which this projected moral al-worthless, if they filled the same situation. teration used to be connected. Where the If we do not remember to distinguish beoutset was froth, and the end is feculence, tween our merit and our place, we shall rethere may be a difference, but there is no im-ceive the homage, not as a debt of gratitude provement. We shall find in retirement, or a bait for bounty, but as a tribute to exunder new modifications, the same passions, cellence. From being accustomed to flattempers, and weaknesses, which we had pro- tery, we shall exact it as a right; from not posed to leave behind us, without the same being opposed, we shall learn not to endure pretence of wanting time to watch against opposition. them. If we settle down in petty systematBesides the danger of contracting supercilic trifling, it is not the size of the concern, ious habits if surrounded with inferiors, there but the spirit in which it is pursued, that is also that of indulging a censorious spirit on makes the difference. The scandal of a village, the intrigues of a little provincial town may be entered into with as much warmth, and as little profit, as the more imposing follies of the metropolis. comparing our own habits with those of persons who live in the world, and of over-rating our own exemption from practices, to which, from indolence, we have no inducement, and, from circumstances, no opportuRetirement, therefore, though so fa- nity. When we compare our hearts and lives vourable to virtue, is not without its dan- with those of whom we know little, let us not gers. Taste, and, of course, conversation, forget to compare also, with others, our sitis liable to degenerate. Intellect is not kept uations and temptations. The comparative in exercise. We are too apt to give to in- estimates we make in our own favour are significant topics an undue importance; to frequently fallacious, always dangerous. Mabecome arbtirary; to impose our opinions as ny who live in the world have a mortified spirit, while others may bring to a cloister of these seasons of retirement, will not be hearts overflowing with the love of that world likely to make a good use of the rest. The from which it is easier to turn our faces than hour of prayer or meditation is a consecration to withdraw our affections. of the hours employed in the business, whethSecluded persons are sometimes less career of society or solitude. In those hours we may lay in a stock of grace, which, if faithfully improved, will shed its odour on every portion of the day. ful to turn to profit small parcels of time, which, when put together, make no inconsiderable fund. Reckoning that they have an indefinite stock upon hand, they neglect If general society contribute more to to devote each portion to its definite purpose. smooth the asperities of manner, to polish The largeness of their treasure makes them roughnesses, and file off sharpnesses, retirenegligent of small, but incessant, expenses. ment furnishes better means for cultivating For instance; instead of light reading being that piety which is the only genuine softener used as a relief from severer studies, and of the temper. Without this corrective, even hetter employments, it is too frequently re- the manners may grow austere, and the lan sorted to as the principal expedient for get-guage harsh. But while the benevolent afting over the tediousness of solitude; people fections are kept in exercise, and the kindly slide into the indulgence to such an excess, offices of humanity in operation, there will that it becomes no longer the relaxation, but be little danger that the mind will become the business. The better studies, which were rough and angular from the want of perpetual only to be relieved, are superseded; they collision with polished bodies. The exercise become dull and irksome; what was once of beneficence, too, in the country is accompleasure is converted into a dry duty, and panied with more satisfaction, as the good the duty is become a task. From this pleni- done is less equivocal. In great cities, and tude of leisure there is also a danger of fall- especially in the metropolis, some charitable ing into general remissness. Business which persons chiefly content themselves with promay be done at any time, is, for that very moting public subscriptions, and superintenreason, not done at all. The belief that we ding public charities, for want of knowing shall have opportunities enough to repair an the actual degree of individual distress or the omission, causes omissions to be multiplied. truth of private representation. Here all the From the dangers of retirement, we come advantage lies on the side of the country now to the more pleasant topic of its advan-resident. The characters, as well as wants, lages. The retired man cannot even pretend of the poor are specifically known, and certhat his character must of necessity be melt-tainly the immediate vicinity of the opulent ed down in the general mass, or cast into the has the more natural, though not the sole general mould. He, at least, may think for claim, to their bounty. himself, may form his own plans, keep his Retirement is calculated to cure the great own hours, and, with little intermission, pur-infirmity, I had almost said the mortal dissue his own projects. He is less enslaved to ease, of not being able to be alone; it is the despotism of custom, less driven about by adapted to relieve the wretched necessity of the absurd fluctuations of fashion. His en- perpetually hanging on others for amusegagements and their execution depend more ment; it delivers us from the habit of deimmediately on himself, his understanding is pending, not only for our solace, but almost left unfettered, and he has less pretence for for our existence on foreign aid, and extriscreening himself under the necessity of fall- cates us from the bondage of submitting to ing in with the popular habits when they mil- any sort of society in order to get rid of ouritate against convenience and common sense. selves. It is very useful sometimes thus to Many of the duties of retirement are more make experiments on our own minds, to strip fixed and certain, more regular in their re- ourselves of helps and supports, to cut off currence, and obvious as to their necessity. whatever is extrinsic, and, as it were, to be As they are less interrupted, the neglect of reduced to ourselves. We should thus learn them is less excusable. In the world, events to do without persons and things, even while and engagements succeed each other with we have them, that we may not feel the prisuch rapidity and pleasure, that the imagina-vation too strongly when they are not to be tion has hardly time or incitement to exercise had. These self-denials constitute the true itself. Where all is interruption or occupa- legitamate self-love, as the multiplying of intion, fancy has little leisure to operate. But dulgences is the surest way to mortification. if, in retirement, where this faculty finds full Those to whom change is remedy, and leisure both for exercise and for chastise- novelty gratification, though the change be ment; if the undisciplined mind is left en- for the worse, and the novelty be a loss, are tirely to its mercy, the guilt will be enhanced, the first to bewail the disappointment which and the benefit lost; it will be ever foraging every one else foresaw. We hear those comfor prey, and, like other marauders, instead plain most that they can get no quiet, whose of stopping to select, will pick up all the want of it arises from the irruptions of their plunder that falls in its way, and bring in a own passions. Peace is no local circumstance. multitude of vain thoughts to feed upon, as It does not depend on the situation of the an indemnification for the realities of which house, but of the heart. True quiet is only it is deprived. The well-regulated mind, in to be found in the extirpation of evil temthe stated seasons devoted to the closet, should pers, in the victory over unruly appetites; therefore severely discipline this vagrant fa- it is found, not merely in the absence of culty. They who do not make a good use temptation, but in the dominion of religion. It arises from the cultivation of that princi- It was in a retiremeut more profound than ple, which alone can effectually smooth any we can conceive, for it was in a world down the swellings of pride, still the restless- of which we know only of four inhabitants, ness of envy, and calm the turbulence of and those of rural occupations, that the first impure desires. It depends on the submis- dreadful breach of relative duties was made; sion of the will, on that peace of God which that the first murder, and that of the dearpasseth all understanding, on the grace of est connexion, was perpetrated. And though Christ, on the consolations of the spirit the treason of Gethsemane was, in the diWith these blessings, which are promised to vine counsels, overruled to repair the deall who seek them, we may find tranquility fection of Eden, yet to show how little local in Cheapside; without them, we may live a circumstances influence action, and govern life of tumult on the Eddystone. principle, a garden was the scene where that treason was accomplished. Those who are more conversant with poetic than pious composition; who have fed their fancy with the soothing dreams of pastoral bards; who figure to themselves a state of pure felicity among the guileless beings with whom a fond imagination peoples the scene of rural life, expect, when they retire into the country, to meet with a new race of mortals, pure as the fabled inhabitants of the golden age-spotless beings, who were not included in the primeval curse, creatures who have not only escaped the contamination of the world, but the original infection of sin, that sin, which they allow may be caught by contact, but which they do not know is a home-born, home-bred disease. It is indeed a most engaging vision, to associate indivisibly with the lovely scenes of nature, the lovelier form of purity: but, alas! such scenes were never!' The groves and lawns of the country no more make men necessarily virtuous, than the brick and mortar of the church make them necessarily pious. The enthusiast of nature, while he enjoys even to rapture her unpolluted charms, must not, however, expect to find in retirement that unsullied innocence which the disappointed Cowley looked for in his retreat at Chertsey; which, after his woful failure there, be continued to persuade himself be should find in America; which his own Claudian vainly believed might be obtained by his interesting Old man of Verona, on escaping from that city; which even the patriarch Lot found not, in escaping from a worse city than Verona. God would not have provided so ill for the welfare of his creatures, who, from the constitution of their nature, could not have subsisted but in communities, if seclusion had been necessary to salvation. That it is the most favourable scene for the production of virtue and the promotion of piety we have fully admitted. In the world temptations meet us at every corner. In retirement, it is we who make the advances. He who had tried the extremes of public and private life, who had been a shepherd and a king, and who knew the dangers of both conditions, has given no exclusive instructions to the cottage or the throne. He gives a general exhortation to ⚫ commune with our own hearts, and be still;' an injunction equally applicable to the sceptre and the crook; and, in his own case, he says, I have poured out my heart by myself;' but neither is the injunction or the example limited to the world or to retirement, for such pious practices equally belong to both. Yet it must be confessed he dwells on pastoral scenes and rural images, with a fondness of which no traces are to be found in his allusion to courts and cities. But whether we are in public or retired life, our inattention to the reason why we were sent into our present state, is one grand cause of the miseries we endure in it. In the world, as we before observed, we are more governed by our senses; in solitude, by our imagination. Both have a tendency to mislead us. The latter tells us we were Perhaps the vivid imagination of Cowley, not sent into this state to suffer, but to enin bis eager longings for America, like that joy; and the senses revolt at the sufferings of some more recent enthusiasts, might have which the imagination had not taught us to been kindled by the alluring appellation of expect. To think of exempting ourselves the New World. This seducing epithet from pain, instead of expecting it and premight convey to his impressible mind the paring for it, is the common error of those idea of something young and original, and who overlook or mistake the end of their beuncontaminate; something that might ex- ing. In the hope of this exemption, we fly cite the notion, not of a new found, but new to one resource after another, thinking, that created world, fresh and fair and faultless.- the ease which has hitherto eluded us, is not But even the disjunction of continents, which was then believed, produces no such distinction in the human character; the native evil pursues the man Far as th' equator thrice to the utmost pole. All experience, all history, especially that history which is supremely the record of truth, rouses us from the bewitching dream, and subverts the fair idea. It was in a garden, a garden too, chosen by the Sovereigo Planter, that the first sin, the prolific seed of all subsequent offences, was committed. attained only because we have not sought it in the right way that all expedients have not yet been tried; that all resources are not yet exhausted. Thus we take fresh comfort from the persuasion, that if we have missed of happiness, it is not because happiness is not the proper state of mortal man, nor the prohibited condition of his being, but because we have erred in our pursuit, and shall still find it in the scheme we are next about to adopt. A bad judgment contributes to our infelicity almost as much as bad dispositions. It is by these false estimates of life, that life is made unhappy. It is from expecting from any state more than it has to bestow, that so little is enjoyed in any. He who is discontented in retirement had perhaps previously amused his vacant hours in collecting all the possibilities of happiness; but had generally caught and fixed her most alluring image in that projected retirement for which his worldly indulgences were every day more disqualifying him We are indeed most ready to allow, that few, comparatively, go so far; we grant that the world would be a much less disorderly and vexatious scene than it is, if the greater number reached these heights which we yet presume to consider as inadequate to the requisitions of the Gospel, as insufficient to answer the claims of Chistianity. Would it not be a very melancholy consideration, if this most encouraging circumstance, of their being not far from the kingdom of God, should ever-which Heaven avert !-prove a possible reason for their not entering into it; if their being almost Christians, should be the very preventing cause of their becoming altogether such? Far be it from me to aim at inspiring disgust at human life, or any despair of the real happiness which is attainable in it. This attainment is a simple process: to contract our desires, that they may be always fewer than our wants; not to expect from this life more Their education has been governed rather than God meant we should find in it; neither by proprieties than principles. They have to be governed by sense or fancy, but by the learned to disapprove of hardly any thing unerring word and will of God; to think in the way of pleasure for its own sake, but constantly that the happiness of a Christian highly to reprobate the extremes to which will always be more in hope than in posses-disorderly people carry it. They censure a sion; to remember that though deep and bit- thing not so much for being wrong in itself, ter sufferings are incident to our frame and as for being immoderate in the degree.state, yet the heaviest and the worst are They condemn all the improper practices those which man inflicts on man, or his own against which the world sets its face, but passions on himself; that we are only truly have not very distinct ideas of the right and and irremediably unhappy when we fasten the wrong in any thing which it tolerates our desires on objects unsuitable or unattain-Religon, which has made a part of their early able-objects neither commensurate to our instruction, took its turn with the usual achigher nature, nor adapted to our future complishments, though subordinately with hope. CHAP. XVI. respect to the earnestness with which it was inculcated, and with about the same proportion of the time allotted to it, as minutes bear to hours It was taught as a needful thing, but not as the one thing needful. Re An inquiry why some good sort of people are ligion, however, continues to maintain its not better. THERE is a class of pleasing and amiable persons whom it would be difficult not to love, and unjust not to respect; but of whom, though candour obliges us to entertain a favourable hope, yet we are compelled to say, that their general conduct is rather blameless than excellent: their practice rather unoffending than exemplary; that their character rather exhibits a capacity for higher attainments, than any demonstration that such attainments are actually made. These are the people who, from their sobriety of deportment and orderly habits, we should be naturally led to expect would make a great proficiency in religion. They are seldom hurried into irregularities; discretion is their cardinal virtue; they are frequently quoted as patterns of decorum; the finger of reproach can seldom be pointed at their conduct; that of ridicule, never. They are not seldom kind and humane, feeling and charitable; they fill many relative duties in a manner which might put to the blush not a few, from whose higher profession better things might have been expected. You have sketched a perfect character,' methinks I hear some angry reader exclaim. What more does society demand? What more would the most correct man require in his son or his wife, his sister or his daughter? appropriate place in their reading, and, to a certain degree, to be adopted into their practice, bearing nearly the same proportion to other objects as it did when they were initia ted into its elements. They were bred in its forms, and in its forms they persist to live, if the term live can be properly applied to any thing which is destitute of the characters and properties of life. They live, it is true, but it is as the vegetable world lives in the winter's frost, which does not indeed kill it, but benumbs its powers, and suspends its vitality. They make a conscience of reading the Scriptures, but sometimes interpret them too much in their own favour, instead of judging of the duties they inculcate by such properties and results as they promise to produce. In making it their study, they neglect to make it their standard. They deceive themselves on many points, by taking their measures from rules that are not legitimate. One makes his own taste and inclination his measure of practice, another the example of an accredited friend; almost all plead the dread of singularity, the vanity of opposing your judgment to that of the world, and the absurdity of setting up a standard which you know to be unattainable. If you censure the thoughtlessness of the dissipated, they censure it too; lamenting that there should ever be an abuse of things so innocent and lawful. If you represent the beauty of piety, they approve of every kind 92 of excellence in the abstract, but when you Excess of every kind is what they carefully avoid; and excess in religion as much as in any other thing. Under this head they expunge zeal from their catulogue of virtues. The establishment of a correct character is their first object, and the good opinion of the world the instrument by which they establish it. This keeps their views low; though it costs as much pains and precaution to keep up a high reputation on worldly grounds as it would to cultivate the principle itself, whose results would, in some respects, be nearly the same as what they are labouring to attain. To be the thing would be a shorter cut to comfort, than by incessant study and effort to keep up its appearance. as a valuable institution for the preservation of the public good; but it does not interest their feelings; they do not consider it so much a thing of individual concern, as of general protection Of its establishment by authority they think more highly, than of its business with their own hearts; of its influence in maintaining general order, than of its efficacy in promoting in themselves peace and joy. In short, they carve out an image of religion not altogether unorthodox, but which, like the uninformed statue of the enamoured artist, though a beautiful figure, is without life, or power, or motion. The more obvious duties being discharged, they are a little inclined to think, that too considerable a portion of their time and talents are left at their own disposal. Large intervals of leisure are rather assumed to be a necessary repose and refreshment from right employments and benevolent actions, and as purchased by their performance, than as having any specific application of their own. In short, things which they call indifferent, make up too large a portion of their scheme of life, and in their distribution of time. The class we are considering are apt to be very severe in their censures of those who have lost their reputation, while they are Propriety and order, virtues in themselves, rather too charitable to those who only deobtain for them the reputation of still higher serve to lose it. This excessive valuation of virtues; all that appears is so amiable, that externals is not likely to be accompanied the world readily gives them credit for qual- with great candor in judging the discredited ities which are supposed to lie behind, and and the unfortunate Errors which we ourare only prevented by diffidence from appear- selves have had no temptation to commit, ing. They carry on with each other an in- we are too much disposed to think out of the tercourse of reciprocal, but measured flatte-reach of pardon; and, while we justly comry; this serves to promote kindness to each mend innocence, we give too little credit to other, and esteem for themselves Self- repentance. complacency is rather kept out of sight by The misfortune is, they do not so much as the delicacy of good breeding, than subdued suspect that there is any higher state of beby religious conviction. They are rather ing, any degree of spiritual life, beyond governed by certain of the more sober what they have attained. They consider reworldly maxims, than by the strictness of ligion rather as a scheme of rules, than a Christian discipline. Though they fear sin, motive principle, as a stationary point, than and avoid it, yet it is to be suspected they a perpetual progress. They consider its obmost carefully avoid those faults which are servances rather as an end, than a means. most disreputable, and that its impropriety It is not so much natural presumption which has its full share in their abhorrence, with roots them where they are, for, in ordinary its turpitude. cases, they are perhaps diffident and modest; As to religion, they rather respect, than it is not always conceit which prevents their love it. They seem to intimate, that there minds from shooting upwards it is the low is something of irreverence in any familiarity notion they entertain of the genius of Chriswith the subject, and place it at an awful tianity; it is the inadequateness of their distance, as a thing whose mysterious gran- views with its requirements; it is their undeur would be diminished by a too near ap- acquaintedness with the spirit of that reliproach. Another reason why they consider re-gion which they profess honestly, but underligion rather as an object of veneration than stand indistinctly. This ignorance makes affection, is because they erroneously con- them rest satisfied with a state which did not ceive it to be an enemy to innocent pleasure satisfy the great apostle. While they think If they are not perfectly good Christians, they have made a progress sufficient to jusit is not because they are good Jews, for tify them in believing they have already atthey do not talk of the words' which were tained,' his vast attainments served only to commanded under that dispensation, when prevent his looking back on them, served they sit in their house, and when they walk by only to stimulate him to press forward tothe way, and when they lie down, and when wards the mark. Some good sort of people, they rise up. Religion engages their regard on the contrary, act as if they were afraid somewhat in the way in which the laws of the of being different from what they are, or of land engage it, as something sacred, from being surprised into becoming better than being established by custom and precedent; they intended. |