and a resolution never more to embark himself in any employment, to which the disobligations and indignities which are seldom wanting in those seasons to such persons, contribute very much. Where. as if this vacation be really chosen and affected, it carries with it a wonderful refreshment of the mind, and is so far from raising an aversion to the former course of life, that it is more like to whet the appetite; and the imagination and conscience of being wiser than he was before, and not liable to those passions which he hath subdued, may even provoke him to be very willing to submit his neck to the same yoke; and having still preserved his reputation, other men are more glad after some years absence to see him tread the stage again, and have more reverence for his dictates, than they would have for a new comer, exalted from being inferior, it may be from being their enemy, to the same condition with them.

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The reason why we have in an age so few examples of the improvement of men by that method, I mean in monarchies; for in republics somewhat very like it, where an inferior officer this year is superior the next, and so the other in vicissitude; but if it be examined, it will be found very different, and justly to be excepted against in monarchy, the difference and distinction of persons being one of the chief pillars that support it, as the equality of persons doth the other government; nor is

it possible for any great officer, who hath thereby extraordinary, and but necessary power to serve a prince, to assume and exercise that authority with confidence and courage, who knows he can be possessed of it but for a year, and all other people know so too: I say, there are two reasons which keep us from much experiènce of this kind; the one, that men in place and authority, who by an active life have arrived to that station, and still retain the vigour and strength of body and mind, or believe they do so, rarely have an inclination to give over their employment; the other, when they have done so, and find themselves at ease in their fortune, without which there can be no repose, they grow to reflect upon the rocks and the shelves upon which they have been near shipwrecked in their former voyage, and of which they then took little notice, and from thence contract an aversion to venture themselves again to sea. For the former of these, except they are in a declining age, men seldom think that they have need of a recess, and that they shall improve their understanding by it; they find the very practice and exercise they are obliged to in the road of their employment, doth every day add to their abilities, as no doubt it doth nor can it be imagined, that men in that condition of life are without much contemplation and revolvings of what they do or hear; but that

is not that kind of contemplation I propose towards their better information. It is an observation that good fellows make, that a quarter of the wine will keep a man drunk that first made him so, notwithstanding the sleeps he takes between; because the first fumes being still kept in motion, the moisture of the brain cannot resist the operation, till it hath recovered its original temper and solidity: so it is in business, which produces a kind of intoxication, or a tumult in the faculties of the mind; it is not the ordinary sleep that nature requires, or those calm reflections which wise men cannot be without, nor the short recreations and vacations which are always allowed to the most busy men, that can enough refresh a person worn out or tired with the constant transactions of difficult and knotty employments; the brain will retain a warmth, and the mind some agitation, from the continued motions, which can never be allayed but by such a recess as makes all rooms vacant, and without so much as an imagination of future activity: and such a kind of retreat as this is very hard to be disposed unto; the importunity of friends will dissuade it as perilous to the constitution, and like to impair health, and so shorten life; servants will resist it for their own sake, yet upon pretences of affection to their masters; at least the deferring it cannot be without some such convenience as will

be hearkened unto; but, above all, the apprehension of being less regarded by other men, and exposed to the insolence of those who may be thereby encouraged to enter into expostulations for past discourtesies, do at last prevail to continue in that post, from which he might very honourably have departed, till by some accidents, he might, but did not, foresee, he is thrown out of it with obloquy and disgrace, and so exposed to the worst of those indignities, for avoiding whereof he declined the only remedy. Without doubt, the voluntary departure from, and entire change of a condition of life in which a man hath been long delighted, without having cause to be displeased with it, cannot but meet with great reluctancy, except it proceeds from a virtuous habit of mind, and a total withdrawing the thoughts from this world, and affixing them for the future upon eternity; and yet they may by the benefit of much cogitation, and the conscience of being able to do good, which hath always a great operation upon the spirit of a good man, innocently return to the acting a new part in the world: which, if his faculties remain the same they were, he will perform with a wonderful lustre and sufficiency, and much the more from the benefit of the rest he hath given him, and having been purely divested from all the thoughts which could perplex him, and so arriving

to that serenity of mind that is then the natural product of a wise and learned contemplation.

For the other sort of men, who have prevailed with themselves to make this retreat, and find themselves in possession of it, it is much more natural to adhere obstinately to it, and to have a peremptory aversion to embark themselves in that ocean, than it was to desire to be on shore. Let no man doubt, that there is so transcendent a joy and delight in that well-chosen and well-instructed solitude, wherein he enjoys a second fruition of whatsoever was agreeable to him in the active part of his life, without the fatigue it cost him, by a sober recollection, that he can more easily part with life itself than with the solitariness of it; in which he is without any melancholy reflections, except such as administer vivacity to his understanding by the information and reformation of it. He recalls to his remembrance the frowns and imperiousness of his superiors towards him, or his own condescensions to divert them; and then triumphs in the liberty and principality he enjoys in his own house, without a rival or competitor. He is as active as he was before, with less trouble of body and mind, and finds new pleasures in the place of those with which he was before enough satiated; a garden and a park supplies him with greater variety and more innocent divertisement,