Some disbelieved, and threw away their chart; many hesitated; all feared. We The stream still descended, and we went on. caught hold of the reeds and rushes to retard our progress, but they broke, and we still went on. The song of youth was heard no more, or heard with disgust. We looked back on the flowery field by which we had passed, saw others tasting their sweets, but they were beyond our reach. Our comforts were gone, and our hopes, like a tropical twilight, grew darker fast. While I was surveying this mournful change, I heard a voice address me "Thoughtless mortal! thou hast spent the day of probation-the day that departs, but does not return. With life and death before thee, thou hast chosen the latter; the votaries of folly have beguiled thee by their flatteries, and the streams of pleasure have caught thee in their vortex. Behold destruction before! Who shall struggle with these conflicting elements? Who shall survive the cataract of destruction?" I started up, and heard the dashing of waters, and the shrieks of perishing wretches. The waves were already heaping around me-I was on the tremendous brink, when-I awoke, glad to find a respite from that destruction, which is not the dream of the moment, but an endless death! THE PURITAN. No. 42. Beneath a sable vale, and shadows deep, Of unaccessible and dimming light, In silence, ebbing clouds more black than night, Within thy bright abysmes, most fair, most dark, Drummond. Or no subject have we had so much romance instead of reason, as of solitude; that power of which so many have written and so few have improved. All the misses at our boarding-schools, think it necessary to write, at least, one paper on solitude, in which the lady pours out the effusions of her fancy, in lines which belie every wish of her heart; in which the gayest and most superficial will be most sentimental. Indeed, woman, from her earliest hours to her last, is a bundle of contradictions. At least you cannot predict her course of conduct by her literary exercitations. I have known a young lady to read Sherlock on Death, when she was going to a ball; and Mr. Hitchcock's Essay on Eating, with a pound of wedding-cake in her hand. If you see before a pair of bright eyes, Enfield's Philosophy, you may conclude she is going to take a walk with an empty-pated lover; and if she is studying Zimmerman on Solitude, it is clear she is just about to be married. Whatever women may say or sing about solitude, it is certain their sphere is society; and therefore I heartily advise them to let alone a subject, on which they cannot utter a word without acting the part of affected, little hypocrites. Solitude is by no means, as has been said, a test of virtue. We retire for very different objects. A shopkeeper, when he goes alone, goes to cast up his accounts; the miser, to reckon his money; the battered beau and libertine, to put on his plasters, to dress his sores and take his medicines; and the ambitious man, to lay his schemes for advancement and power. Some retire to write idle books, and some to read them; and some in solitude fill their imaginations with images of voluptuousness, more exquisite and more seductive than any that are found in real life. I hardly know a more sensual wretch than Rousseau. Indeed, it seems to me when the Prince of Darkness raised up advocates for his cause, and patrons of infidelity, it was a master-piece of policy, to commit it to two such men as Rousseau and Voltaire; they were perfect correlatives. Voltaire took all the laughers, and Rousseau all the weepers. Voltaire was all sarcasm and satire, and Rousseau all romance and sentiment; and thus between them both, they swept the board. They have done more than any others to undermine the religious principles of mankind; and, to this hour, reign without rivals, the giants of licentious principles on the continent of Europe Yet Rousseau was a lover of solitude. He even once attempted to establish a plan of seclusion for life, though he found that his fancy had imposed on his feelings. Hear how he exposes his singular views. "Sometimes." says he, speaking of Madame de Warrens, who, by the way, was one of the chastest harlots that ever departed from virtue, through the sublimest of principles, "Sometimes I quitted this dear friend, that I might enjoy the uninterrupted pleasure of thinking of her; this is a caprice I can neither excuse nor fully explain; I only know this was really the case, and therefore avow it. I remember that Madame de Luxembourg told me one day, in raillery, of a man, who used to leave his mistress, that he might enjoy the satisfaction of writing to her. I answered, I could have been this man. I might have added, that I had done the very same.' In another place, he describes, in his own glowing language, how he filled up his solitary moments, when he lived as a kind of amorous dependent on this peculiar lady. "If all this, (i. e. his happiness,) consisted in facts, actions or words, I could somehow or other convey an idea of it. But how shall I describe what was neither said or done, nor even thought; but enjoyed, felt, without my being able to particularize any other object of my happiness than the bare idea. I rose with the sun and was happy; I walked and was happy; I saw Madame de Warrens and was happy; I quitted her and was still happy! Whether I rambled through the woods, over the hills, or strolled along the vallies, read, was idle, walked in the garden, or gathered fruits, happiness still accompanied me; it was fixed on no particular object; it was within me, nor could I depart from it a single moment." Such was the solitude of Rousseau. I only wish, in the abundance of his communicativeness, he had informed us, whether this happiness, which he thinks so mystical, did or did not, in any part of it, arise, in addition to Madame de Warrens' charms, from opium or brandy. The good man, too, loves occasional solitude. He is very happy when alone; and he is not in the least perplexed to tell the cause of his happiness. It arises from a conscious sense of the presence of God, and a contemplation of his infinite perfections. When he |