Tremaine's was to be the Norfolk husbandry, and that alone-but Northamptonshire was not Norfolk. In vain his bailiff assured him that his drills, his horse-hoes, and his scarifiers would be useless, and his system fail. The bailiff was thought a bigot, and another appointed, who succeeded no better, and who even joined the inferior farm servants in a mutiny against the course that was prescribed. A thrashing machine had been built to go by water, where little water was to be had. A stream was turned to remedy the defect, and it was remedied, but at the expense of a lawsuit in which Mr. Tremaine was cast. He laid the blame, first upon his counsel, and then upon his agent. The first said they could not proceed for want of instructions; the last that he could not procure instructions for want of leisure in his master.

His mind now began to ruminate more than ever upon the scenes he had quitted, and a comparison of what he had exchanged with what he had embraced and he has since very frankly owned, that the disappointments of the country would have probably sent him back to the disappointments of the town, if he had not, precisely at that moment, received a very flattering letter from one of the heads of his party, opening to him the scheme of operations they intended to adopt against the minister during the next session, and inviting him to

come up and share in the anticipated success. The letter flattered him into good-humour; the defeat in the lawsuit was forgotten; and after a very complacent meditation, of a whole day's continuance, he sat down to a long and eloquent ebullition (in every word of which he thought himself sincere) upon the impossibility of the world's satisfying a mind like his; upon the charms of his retirement, which, he said, were never-fading, and the little probability there was, with a disposition so fixed, that he should be able to give that assistance to the cause, which his friends in their partiality thought him capable of affording. He concluded with assuring his friend, that if he would come to visit him, he would find him

"Tacitum Sylvas inter reptare salubres

"Curantem quicquid dignum sapiente bono que est.”

For a few days after this, Tremaine was in his glory; the glory of having demonstrated the strength of his principles, and of having given the most incontestable proofs of the philosophic temper of his mind, by refusing to return to the world. He went back, therefore, awhile to his library, lived with the good Duke and Jaques, in the forest of Ardennes, and felicitated himself upon being one of those

"Who, hid in desert inaccessible,

"Under the shade of melancholy boughs,

"Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time."

He also passed some hours with his favourite and proposed model, Sir William Temple, whose philosophy, and whose gardening he really wished, and flattered himself that he was born to imitate.

But the magic soon dissolved. His party friend did not answer his letter; yet the greatest activity prevailed in politics, and a partial coalition was talked of, to be included in which he had forfeited all pretension. It was evident he was not thought of, and he practically felt, that though "the world forgetting" might appear a very soothing sentiment to some minds, the same minds might not always be equally soothed by the reflection, that they were By the world forgot."

CHAP. XIII.

ENNUI.

"I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, "foregone all custom of exercise.'

SHAKSPEARE.

TREMAINE'S listlessness, not to say peevishness, now increased. To return to serious study was impossible, and the hours were too long to be

filled by light and wandering reading,—which, as a principal occupation, he found could scarcely amuse, much less give substantial satisfaction. The time hung equally heavy, under the desultory and unimportant employments with which less sensible, or less ardent minds can fill up the longest day. He once or twice, before the season closed, ventured upon shooting. He had the best dogs, but they knew and would obey nobody but the gamekeeper; and as they gave him, therefore, no sort of interest, their sagacity and courage afforded him little pleasure. He had the best gun: but as it had scarcely been used, it presented no associations, and he surveyed it as a mere tube of metal, which could inflict death at a distance. It had no tale to tell of well-hunted fields, of game manfully pursued, and skilfully brought down. He took it up, and laid it aside with indifference.

As to fishing, he had rods, nets, and harpoons without number: and what was more, he had read with delight in Walton's Angler. But he knew nothing of the art, or of the nature of the prey he was to seek; and when he did make two or three attempts to interest himself in the sport, he found that his thoughts were more in London, or at best with a book, than with his float. He therefore soon took leave of angling, not without wondering at his father's taste and disposition, which

could be charmed and satisfied by so monotonous a

pursuit.

Gardening, however, promised to furnish a rich fund of occupation. It was the appropriate amuse

ment, nay, often the support, of a true philosopher. There was nothing on which his fancy had ever fixed with truer pleasure. Besides, he knew all that had been ever said upon it by any body. Bacon, and Cowley, and Temple, and Lord Orford; the count, the chevalier, and the prior,* and the old Corycian of Virgil, were often quoted, and as often envied, whenever this natural and delightful art occurred to his imagination. Yet, in reality, of a garden Tremaine had no other idea than as a place to walk in, furnished with a terrace always ready for his steps, and full of sweet sights and sweet smells. But to watch, to assist, or even to understand the process of nature; to class roots and plants, to divide bulbs or gather seeds, to graft or to prune, never occurred to him, except as the troubles attendant on gardening. Botany was too finical for his full mind; and even Sir William Temple's pride in his peaches could never induce his attention to fruit trees. All this, he said, was more properly the province of servants, who were paid for it, and who must necessarily understand it better; it was the mechanical part, and he left * See the Spectacle de la Nature.