pleasures which accompany the labours of the husbandman, and with which I myself am delighted beyond expression. They are pleasures which meet with no obstruction even from old age, and seem to approach nearest to those of true wisdom *. To the same purpose he again speaks a little afterwards.

These panegyrics, to be just, must be understood with great limitations, and can never be generally extended to that numerous body of men who are employed in the culture of the earth. There is scarce, perhaps, any condition of life which is attended with more anxiety than that of a common farmer: to him a bad year is a

* Venio nunc ad voluptates agricolarum, quibus ego incredibiliter delector; quæ nec ullâ impediuntur senectute, et mihi ad sapientis vitam proximè videntur accedere. Habent enim rationem cum terrâ, quæ nunquam recusat imperium, nec unquam sine usurâ reddit, quod accepit. Quamquam me quidem non fructus modò sed etiam ipsius terræ vis ac natura delectat. Cicero de Senectute, cap. 15.

serious calamity; he is anxious to lay in happily his seed; he is then anxious for seasons favourable to its growth; and, after his fields are become ripe for the harvest, almost every cloud that flies over his head is an object of apprehension. Such high encomiums, therefore, can never be applicable, except in the case of a country gentleman who is not obliged to live on the fruits of his own industry, by whom a barren year is not felt, and who retains no anore of his grounds in his own hands than may serve to his convenience or amusement. And even here the happiness is found often to exist merely in contemplation. It was some such form of life which appears to have smitten the imagination of Cowley; and what was the consequence? When he came at length to take possession of his elysium, he met with so rude a reception, that others, who indulge themselves in a like prospect, may learn thence to moderate their expectations. "The first night," says he, in a letter to Dr. Sprat, "that I came hither, I

caught so great a cold, with a defluxion of rheum, as made me keep my chamber ten days; and, two after, had such a bruise on my ribs with a fall, that I am yet unable to move or turn myself in my bed. This is my personal fortune here to begin with. And, besides, I can get no money from my tenants, and have my meadows eaten up every night by cattle put in by my neighbours. What this fignifies, or may come to in time, God knows; if it be ominous, it can end in nothing less than hanging*." Two years afterwards, he died; and thus terminated his plan of rural felicity.

It must however be acknowledged, that there are few occupations more adapted to yield a rational delight than those of husbandry, as well on account of their utility, as of their suitableness to the primitive dignity of our nature. The culture of the ground was the original employment of

*See Johnson's Life of Cowley.

man. Our first parents were placed in the garden of Eden to dress and to keep it ; and there seems in their posterity a kind of instinctive disposition to recover at least an external image of the paradisiacal state. There is scarce any one, however privileged or exalted he may be in the world, who does not sometimes please himself in the prospect of rural labours and enjoyments, who does not hope some day to adorn his own garden or cultivate his own farm, and to sit down in repose under his own vine or fig-tree and among the greateft personages in every age, who have gathered laurels in the field, or successfully governed kingdoms, we are told of some who have found, in the shade of retirement and agricultural occupations, that secret satisfaction which they had never experienced amidst the splendours of a court or the triumphs of victory. And the same spirit of content will be diffused among mankind at large, when they shall have learned, according to the word of prophecy, to beat their swords into plough-shares,

and their spears into pruning-hooks; when, by a general prevalence of piety, the reapers, like those of Boaz, in gathering in the harvest, shall say to the master, The Lord be with thee, and he shall answer, The Lord bless * you ; and when every ruler shall become the shepherd of his people.

III. Rural diversions. As it might justly be thought impertinent for one who is no sportsman to undertake to estimate the pleasures of fowling and hunting, I shall dismiss this topic very briefly. It is certain that, in point of present gratification, every pleasure is such as it is felt to be; and therefore, if any one finds himself delighted in wandering through the woods with his fowling-piece, or in scouring the country along with dogs and horses and desperate riders, to the terror of an innocent quadruped, it would be in vain to dispute against his experience. To what persons, or in what cases, such diversions are allowable, I leave others to determine;

* Ruth, ii. 4.