unhappy feelings, when they indulged this passion to excess; and some
ancient has justly said, that none but a god, or a savage, can suffer
this exile from human nature.

The following extracts from Sir George Mackenzie's tract on Solitude are
eloquent and impressive, and merit to be rescued from that oblivion
which surrounds many writers, whose genius has not been effaced, but
concealed, by the transient crowd of their posterity:--

I have admired to see persons of virtue and humour long much to
be in the city, where, when they come they found nor sought for
no other divertissement than to visit one another; and there to
do nothing else than to make legs, view others habit, talk of
the weather, or some such pitiful subject, and it may be, if
they made a farther inroad upon any other affair, they did so
pick one another, that it afforded them matter of eternal
quarrel; for what was at first but an indifferent subject, is
by interest adopted into the number of our quarrels.--What
pleasure can be received by talking of new fashions, buying and
selling of lands, advancement or ruin of favourites, victories
or defeats of strange princes, which is the ordinary subject of
ordinary conversation?--Most desire to frequent their
superiors, and these men must either suffer their raillery, or
must not be suffered to continue in their society; if we
converse with them who speak with more address than ourselves,
then we repine equally at our own dulness, and envy the
acuteness that accomplishes the speaker; or, if we converse
with duller animals than ourselves, then we are weary to draw
the yoke alone, and fret at our being in ill company; but if
chance blows us in amongst our equals, then we are so at guard