follow the foundation of all true taste, Nature,—who certainly never meant us for solitary animals, like beasts of prey. My grandeur, therefore, is not at all diminished because I have other fellow creatures besides servants within ken. And yet, after all, you see they are not so close as to interrupt or overlook us in the smallest degree; my garden is as sacred as if it were a hundred miles off. To be sure I see other chimneys smoking besides my own; and as the evening advances, I see light after light illuminating my neighbours' houses; every one indicating that there are friends and inhabitants at hand; which is, at least, a comfortable idea." I agreed to this, and reminded him, not without a cordial assent, that every poet and landscape gardener, the most fastidious, had always enumerated this among the features of taste. "Why, say what we will," replied he, "as we are men, all signs of habitation by our fellow men must be pleasing. Even, on the score of protection alone, (though I am not much afraid in these days,) I prefer," said he, "the proximity of neighbours, to a desert;-which I call all places, however beautiful, where there are none. In former days every lone house was obliged to be a castle, to save throats from being cut. In these times that is not necessary; but we know the empire which imagination holds over reason, and we are delighted sometimes with just so much idea of danger as may make us feel pleasure in thinking we are safe. Now, where there are neighbours, this is our case; where none, we cannot always prevent the thought, at least of helplessness, from intruding; and this is seated so deep in the very frame of our minds, that it forms a principal ingredient in the philosophy of agreeable or disagreeable sensations." "I allow this," said I, "for when I have traversed a vast heath, with no inhabitants but those of a solitary hovel or two, I have felt refreshed, I had almost said comforted, by a sudden approach to a hamlet, ever so small; and if a single house, as it sometimes does, has uplifted itself to the eye, I have blessed myself that I was not born to live in it. Still," I told him, "I feared that while the theory appeared good, the practice condemned it; for all were fond of burying themselves in seclusion. Even the citizen in his box is never satisfied till he has planted and palisaded himself from the eye of the passing world." "That is," returned he, "because the citizen at the two-mile-stone has too much of a good thing. Where he quite out of the world, or only as we are here, he would not do so. Barring these exceptions I think your theory and practice are in general reversed; for do we not see the owners of the most magnificent seclusions become mere birds of passage, instead of attached inhabitants? Are they not forced to call in the aid of powerful reinforcements of visitors? Or if they cannot procure these, do they not fly to watering-places for relief? I, who never liked living in a crowd, could neither bear that, nor its contrast-solitude. I therefore, after some years' trial, let a fine but lonely family mansion, (for which I was thought a curmudgeon by the good-natured world,) and settled myself here, where I enjoy my life, such as it is, far more to my satisfaction." "But the sameness," observed I, "of looking always upon the same buildings." "Is not worse," said he, "than looking always upon the same trees." "Yet the trees, though but wood and foliage, are full of animation, and tell of the wonders of creation!" "Ay! but they are not flesh and blood, and tell nothing of human nature. To be sure the trees seem animated with a soul; but it is really so with houses, where inhabitants make them actually alive. You will scarcely believe that, from often eyeing them in different lights, according to the hours, I feel as if they were my personal friends; they have even a physiognomy with which I can converse." I found he was prepared at all points, and told him so; adding, that I was very willing to become his disciple, for every thing about him seemed to have its rationale, and to breathe order and content. "What I like, too," said I, "is to see how perfectly compatible with the ease and dignity of birth and breeding, is an attention, silent, indeed, and unobvious, but efficacious, to the comforts of an ample though not immoderate establishment. I have observed order to reign in all your departments,and all the better for it." "Why, that," replied he, "I got at my cousin Grandborough's, from observing the total want of it. My Lady, because she never had more than one footman till she married my Lord, will now never have less than six, all crowding together. The consequence is, that they are in one another's way, and break one another's shins. It is the same thing with everything else in their ménage; which sadly o'ersteps the modesty of taste: for taste is modest as well as grand, and mere expense will never give it its true character." I own I was more and more surprised at my host of the road-side, whom Fawknor thought it a disgrace to be ranked with. I looked my approbation, and he wound up by saying,-"In short, I learned this lesson from my rich and grand relations, that if to feel interested about things is to be happy, to push them à l'outrance will not accomplish it; for where there is superfluity in every thing, there can be interest in nothing. Were I a mathematician, I should say, that as the great beauty of that charming science, (for beauty it has,) is proportion, so proportion is as beautiful in moral as in geometrical investigation." "You astonish me," said I: "and, I own, beat all my town philosophy, 'my dukedom to a beggarly denier.' But I should like this more explained." "What I mean," he replied, "is, that as proportion is one cause of beauty in physics, so it is in morals: and s the agreeableness, whether from grandeur or beauty, of a whole, (in architecture, for example,) depends upon the proportion of its parts to that whole, and to one another; so in morals, happiness will depend upon the accommodation of means to ends; upon consistency of conduct; and upon the avoidance of all disproportion in our way of living, whether from silly extravagance, or niggardly saving." "Clearly explained,” said I. "I have a little corollary to add," said he, "but which you will anticipate. A man whose house, pleasures, or habits of living do not exceed, or do not greatly fall short of his means and station, feels increased pleasure from that very circumstance. I need not apply the contrary consequence to the contrary conduct. Hence, all fortunes, all situations, and even everything arising from education, are, in amount of happiness to the holders of them, pretty much alike. Everything depends upon your understanding your place, and being in it: and this is what I call moral proportion." SECTION XIX. A RECLUSE. "I'll give my jewels for a set of beads; 1 I FELT the truth of all these observations of Blythfield, and not the less for their perspicuity, or for their coming from a quarter where I so little expected them. I only wished that he who had left us in the morning had come in for a share of the lecture. "By the way," added Blythfield, whom I would wish now to call the philosopher of nature, rather than of ease, "there is near us a practical example of content, arising out of the adaptation of means to ends, though at the expense of great privation, which I could wish you to contemplate." I asked of whom he spoke, and he said, "Of a gentleman (for gentleman he is, though leading the life VOL. II.-4 of a pauper,) who has much interested me, both by the vicissitudes and reverses in his life, and the manner in which he bears, with a view to redeem them. "This is my game," said I. "Who can it be?” "His name is Carleton," returned Blythfield. "Carleton! What, Carleton who outran himself in every excess; the greatest dandy; the greatest gourmand; the greatest jockey; the greatest philanderer: he who, to recover himself, staked everything he had left on the throw of a die, and lost it?" "The same." "But how came he here?" "It was said he debated whether he should shoot himself, or go to the West Indies; but as people who debate about it seldom shoot themselves, he chose the latter." "How then, and how long has be been here?" "He is now in the fourth year of his exile," replied Blythfield, "and in the successful pursuit of a laudable end, by laudable means; for which I honour him; and I am glad to say, that the moral proportion of his present position has been so well preserved, that he has, from a mortified and disappointed man, already become a happy one." "I am impatient to know more of his history," said I. "If you are a friend," replied Blythfield, "he will perhaps give it you himself." "No!" I said, "I knew him in his dazzle and his splendour; he will not like to be seen shorn of his beams." "You do him injustice," replied my host; "I have told you he is a pregnant instance of what knowledge of moral proportion can do. In short, his sense and fortitude in this respect elevate him far more than his penury depresses him in my estimation; and the truth is, he is obviously happy, though deprived of everything like what others would call the means of happi ness. "There must be some temporary excitement here," |