CHRISTIAN MORALS. AN CHAP. XIV. On Retirement. N old French wit fays, that " ambition itself might teach us to love retirement, there is nothing which fo much hates to companions." Cowley corrects this fentiment with one equally lively and more found, that "ambition, indeed, detefts to have company on either fide, but delights above all things in a train behind, and ufhers before." To feek therefore a retre a till we have got rid of this ambition, to fly to retirement as a scene of pleasure or improvement, till the love of the world is eradicated from the heart; or at least till this eradication is its predominant defire, will only conduct the discontented mind to a long train VOL. II. B train of fresh disappointments, in addition to that series of vexations of which it has fo conftantly complained in the world. The amiable writer already referred to, who has as much unaffected elegance and good fenfe in his profe works, as false tafte and unnatural wit in his poetry, seems not to be quite accurate when he infifts in favour of his beloved folitude, that " a minister of ftate has not so much bufinefs in public as a wife man has in private; the one," fays he, “has but part of the affairs of one nation, the other has all the works of God and nature under his confideration." But furely there is a manifest difference between our having great works under our confideration, and having them under our controul. He affigns, indeed, high motives for the purposes of retreat, but he does not seem to affign the higheft. Should he not have added, in conjunction with the objects he enumerates, what fhould be the leading object of the retirement of the good, the study of his own heart, as well as of in animate |