fays Seneca, "worms and filthy creepers increase, "fo do evil and corrupt thoughts in the mind "of an idle perfon." The whole foul is contaminated by it. As in a commonwealth that has no common enemy to contend with, civil wars generally enfue, and the members of it rage against each other, fo is this body natural, when it is idle, macerated and vexed with cares, griefs, falfe fears, difcontents, fufpicions, and restlefs anxiety, for want of proper employment. Vulture like, it preys upon the bowels of its victims, and allows them no refpite from their fufferings. For he's the Tityus here, that lies opprest Idle perfons, whatever be their age, fex, or condition, however rich, well allied, or fortunate, can never be well either in body or mind. Wearied, vexed, loathing, weeping, fighing, grieving, and fufpecting, they are continually offended with the world and its concerns, and difgufted with every object in it. Their lives are painful to themselves, and burthenfome to others; for their bodies are doomed to endure the miferies of ill health, and their minds to be tortured by every foolish fancy. This is the true caufe why the rich and great generally labour under this difease; for idleness is an appendix to nobility, who, counting business a disgrace, fanction every whim in search of, and spend all their time, in diffipated pleasures, idle sports and useless recreations: and Their conduct, like a fick man's dreams, Is form'd of vanity and whims. Pharaoh reafoned philofophically on the subject of this disease: for when the children of Ifrael, for want of fufficient employment, requested, with murmuring and discontent, permiffion to offer up their facrifices in the defart, he commanded the task-master to double the portion of their daily duty, conceiving that as the cause of their discontent proceeded from their want of employment, their murmurings might be appeased by additional labour. "Ye fhall "no more, faid the king, give the people straw "to make bricks; let them gather it for them"felves: but the tale of the bricks which they "did make heretofore, fhall not in aught be "diminished; for they are idle, and therefore it "is they cry, Let us go and facrifice to our "God." Otiofus animus nefcit quid volet: An idle perfon knows not when he is well, what he would have, or whither he would go; and being tired with every thing, displeased with every thing, choly. SOLITUDE, nimia folitudo, too much folita rinefs is cozen-german to idleness, and a principal cause of melancholy. It is either enforced or voluntary. ENFORCED SOLITUDE is that which is obferved by ftudents, monks, friars, and anchorites, who, by their order and courfe of life, muft abandon all fociety, and betake themfelves to privacy and retirement. Bale and Hofpinian well term it, Otio fuperftitiofo feclufi; fuch as are the Carthufians, who, by the rules of their order, eat no flesh, keep perpetual filence, and never go abroad. Under this head alfo may be ranged fuch as live in prisons or in defert places, "Far from the busy hum of men." Like those country gentlemen who inhabit lonely and fequeftered houfes; for they are obliged to live without company, or to exceed their incomes by hofpitably entertaining all who can be induced to vifit them; except, indeed, they chufe to hold converfation and keep company with their fervants and hinds, or fuch as are unequal to them in birth, inferior to them in fortune, and of a contrary temper and difpofition; or. or else, as their only resource from folitude, fly, as many country gentlemen do, to the neighbouring alehouse, and there spend their time with vulgar fellows in unlawful disports and diffolute courses. There are others who are caft upon this rock for want of means to enjoy fociety: there are others who feek it from a ftrong sense of some impending or fuffered infirmity or disgrace and there are others who are induced to seek it from the natural timidity and bashfulness of their temper; or as the means of avoiding that rudeness of behaviour which they are in danger of meeting with in the world, and which the delicacy of their feelings, and too exquifite fenfibility, render them unable to endure. Nullum folum infelici gratius folitudine, ubi nullus fit qui miferiam exprobret. From whatever cause, however, this fpecies of folitariness may arise, it is conducive to a melancholy difpofition: but fuch effects are most likely to be produced on the minds of those who have previously passed their time in the focial pleasures and lively recreations of good company, and are, upon fome fudden emergency or event, compelled to refign the happiness of domeftic life, or the more vivid joys of popular entertainments, for the cold comforts of a country cottage, where they are abridged of their usual liberty, and debarred from the company of their ordinary affociates. But it mind, like a Siren, a thoeing-horn, or a sphinx, b feductive paths, and imperceptible degrees, int this irrevocable gulph. Pifo calls this difpo fition the primary caufe of melancholy; for th higheft delight perfons thus tainted can enjoy, i to be abfent from all fociety, to lie whole days in bed, to feclude themselves in their chambers from the fight of mankind, to faunter alone through fome fequeftered grove, amidst the mazes of fome entangled wood, or on the margin of a rufhy brook, in filent but pleafing meditation on fuch fubjects as moft affect their minds: amabilis infania et mentis gratiffimus error: a moft incomparable delight it is fo to melancholize, to build fancied caftles in the air, to go fmiling to themfelves, to act without controul or obfervation an infinite variety of parts, and to realize in Fancy's maze the fubject of their imaginations, paft, prefent, and to come. So delightful are thefe toys at firft, that they follow them day after day, and night after night, with unexhaufted pleasure, conceiving from the powerful impreffion they feel, that they are the very characters which their thoughts reprefent to their diftempered but pregnant minds. No object can induce them to abandon, or prevent them from enjoying, the delufive pleafures which their |