and grandees, great adventurers, men of learning and genius, statesmen and warriors,-how age, and the succumbing of ambition, will render such a scene as this interesting to me! Yet it is so. I am amused, pleased, and even plunged in thought by the sight. You see Nature in her true colours in this moving picture."

Still I could not help expressing my wonder, how a man of so active a mind could dispose of his time, aloof from his country, and all old interests. We had now left the market once more for the Sonenberg road, and I went on.

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For as you cannot always be occupied with trifles, I should tremble for your hours."

"Make yourself easy," said he; "for the trifles we have talked of derive most of their power to amuse from their being a relaxation from more serious employments."

Upon my expressing surprise as to what they were, he told me he had so resumed his habits of reading, that the day was too short for him. The great object of his pursuit was, however, not politics, as I thought, but the philosophy of man, under all his aspects and in all his states. This, he said, was inexhaustible; and only increased in interest the longer it was pursued.

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It will last," said he," the longest life, and far exceed mine. The Decline and Fall' which

6

made Lausanne so happy to Gibbon, was nothing to it; and these walks, this air, this exercise, and the trifles you suppose my chief or only occupation, are, in fact, no more than the unbending of a mind full fraught with reflection, though not on what you suppose. It is by this I hope to recover from a sourness of temper which, though hasty, and easily roused, is, I trust, not malevolent. When I first came here, however, I own I was disappointed, for I came too late. The season was over; the streets were silent and sad; and the beauty of the place, and the thought of what it was intended for, only made me more melancholy. All this, however, went off. The effect had been more from wrong expectations, than because I was unfit to be alone. On the contrary, my humour and recollections were more soothed than they could have been in a crowd. Solitary elegance, is still elegance; and if it was only for the perfect beauty of the environs, inviting to all the contemplations that are most pleasing to the mind, Wiesbaden would ever be a favourite sojourn for me.

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A devotee of retirement might be laughed at for supposing such a place favourable to his disposition. This is a mistake. Retirement neither is, nor requires, a desert. What it is that we retire from, is the whole question. We are at

this moment, you see, in a romantic seclusion of shrubs and flowers, enveloped in trees, which wholly banish the town from sight. Yet it is, perhaps, its very proximity to the town, which, from contrast, forms its charm. Its sequestered air, its verdure, and its silence, tell me I am almost out of the world; but the regular return of busy sounds, too near to be not understood, too distant to be unpleasing, assure me I am in it. This is as it should be. I want seclusion as a promoter of thought, and forgetfulness of particular objects; but I want not to desert, or be deserted; which I should be if too far removed. In short, I love my species, though not my country; and, being now a complete citizen of the world, I court, rather than fly from, its comforts and its protection."

Here our conversation ended; and, indeed, seeing him so fixed, I thought it booted little to continue a vain endeavour to change him. But as I was about to return home, I asked him if he had any commands to the Etheredges, and if I could give them no hope of their ever seeing him again. His reply was memorable :—

"Tell Lady Isabel how much I thank her for sending me to this delightful place, of which she is still remembered as the grace and ornament, as well as wherever else she has been;

and tell them both that I will return to England when its leading nobles shall be either afraid, or ashamed, to tell the people to resist the laws which make those nobles what they are."

These memorable words closed my intercourse with this extraordinary man; who still pursues the life he has chosen; and whom, with all his mortifications, from the mode in which he consoles himself, and his absorption in the most important inquiries, which he may one day give to the world, I may fairly now rank amongst the happy.

My search after happiness even here, therefore, was successful, and so I am proud to re cord it.

SECTION XI.

"Like a school broke up,

Each hurries towards his home and hiding-place."
2nd Part HENRY IV.

I LITTLE thought that Gorewell would have detained me so long from pursuing the road to Bath, to which I now return; but my changed notions of that remarkable and decided character, when divested of its cynicism, as it was at Wiesbaden, gave me an interest about him which I could not quit. In effect, what he said of himself was true. He loved his species, though he was out of humour with England; and his benevolence was quite equal to his height of mind. He had not, perhaps, the repose of Heartfree, in his reasoning upon the events of the world; nor had he Heartfree's amusing resource in country pleasures; but he had equal independence, and equal excellence of heart.

Proceed we now to other

game;

and as I now