adopt the superstition of India and Egypt, which had gradually become so popular in Greece, I entered as it were into the recefses of my own unsophisticated understanding, and applied the rules of common reason and sense to the pedantry of the schools and the superstition of the people. 1 When I taug that superstition had its origin in fear, I taught nothing that has not been evinced by the everlasting experience of mankind. When I represented the universe as infinite and eternal, I fhowed it in no other light than it must be looked upon for ever by those who consider the infinite power and duration of the spirit by which it is animated and directed. If I held the tendency of matter to be equal in all directions, and finally convergent no where, I taught only what must necefsarily follow from the infinity of worlds. If that nothing in the universe was quiescent, on similar principles founded on the infinite activity of the spirit wherewith matter is universally pervaded and actuated. When I sportively yielded to the doctrines of Moschus, of Leucippus, and Democritus, that all nature was in a constant state of deperition and renovation, but finally inexterminable in its principles, I taught that which seemed at the same time to be most conformable to wisdom and the eternal spirit of the uni verse. I did not consider the world and worlds as machines that required to be mended and renewed in their primary, or inferior and secondary movements, but as an infinite whole without error, emanating and acting uniformly from and with and around an infinite and intelligent spirit, whose nature and propensity it was, and is, and ever will be, to connect wisdom and happiness with order, and to blefs and make happy continually in the order of wisdom and conformity to universal nature. All these speculations are to me now as the playful mimickries of children, or the wandering dreams of the contemplative Hermit. But heaven has not deceived us. Truth and reason with us are purged of doubt and error, but are the same in substance as when they were dimly seen, through the grofser medium of terrestrial organs. I lived and I taught in a garden, not that I might pass my days in indolence and pleasure, but that I might habituate myself, and my disciples to the lefsons and admonitions of nature, and live contentedly on her simplest productions. I did not abstain from the use of animal food, like the superstitious Indians, or the self macerating disciples of Zeno; or from blood, like the Egyptians who, fond of flesh, made a compromise with the foolish superstition of the Indians; but I lived upon cakes made of maize, and drank from the living fountain, improving and enjoying without intemperance all the cultivated fruits of the earth, and using wine only in the feasts of friendship and commemoration of the illustrious dead. "Occupavimus te Fortuna atque cepimus, omneis aditus tuos intercludere conavimus, ut ad nos adspirare non posses."* I taught that the desire of pleasure or happiness was the Oct. 23, prime mover of the human frame and of the human mind, and that in the possession or enjoyment of real and permanent pleasure the chief happiness of man did consist, and I endeavoured to prove that this pleasure was in the absence of bodily pain, and in the presence of mental tranquillity by virtue. That sacrifices, and ceremonies in the temples, abnegations and macerations of body, or dejections of spirit in cloystered retirement, were of no avail for the favour of the God of the universe, nor any thing fhort of sincere confi dence in his wisdom and goodaefs and benevolence towards our fellow creatures. For these doctrines, and the abuse which was madę of them by some of my followers, I was railed at by the stoicks whom I railed not again, because Ţ knew that in there austere pretences to superior virtue, and in the pride of their performances, they disdained my principles, which were founded on the weaknefs of human nature, and its improvement by rational and attainable purposes. The doctrines of my garden, led to no lefs purity of manners than those of the Portico, but they led to them as an effect of my principles, and not as a foundation for spiritual pride, and philosophical ostentation. My disciples were temperate and correct in their manners, but they were gay and cheaṛful. Virtue and happiness were with them inseparable; and I taught them to believe that they could not subsist asunder. I could never believe or teach that the world was disturbed by Dæmons, but rather that it was uniformly governed with perfect wisdom, 1 but in a manner ultimately inscrutable to the wisdom of man, though discoverable every where, in faint but beautiful traces of the glorious system". Having said thus, he paused, and I, though full of admiration and respect, was able in broken accents thus to address the venerable man. O excellent and injured Epicurus! Thou hast now amply discovered that virtue did not deceive thee upon earth, but is the never failing friend of man. I also desire to be fully persuaded that all rational beings were formed for each other and that bearing with them is a branch of justice and a source of hap pinefs; that mistakes are involuntary, and the ultimate affections of the heart almost always unknown: that health of body and peace of mind, which constitute supreme happiness, can consist only in virtue producing in the body absence from pain and irrita tion by temperance, and in the mind tranquillity, by the love of order and by confidence in the perfection of the Supreme Being and of the universe. Ah why fhould I suffer the little affair of glory to disturb me when I reflect how all the things that I admire shall be involved in oblivion and in the vast immensity of eternal duration. How empty the noisy echo of applauses; how fickle and injudicious the applauders; how narrow the bounds within which our praise is confined; and that the earth itself, nay all that the finest glasses can descry in the firmament, is but as a point in the infi-nity of nature! Yes Epicurus, I also desire above all things to keep myself from distraction and from useless desires, to retain my freedom, and to consider every thing as a man of courage, as a man, as a citizen, as a poor and fallible mortal; that the world is in continual change, that this life is seated in opinion and will quickly pafs away never to return, while virtue and happiness being seated in the soul must be eternal like itself. While I was thus speaking, I found myself drawn involuntarily to my Portico in the summer house, that I might fhow to my visitor the statues of Lu cretius Carus, of Pomponius Atticus, of Horace, and · of Gassendi; but in moving along methought I struck my foot upon a stone and fell to the ground, which awakened me in trepidation from my pleasing dream. I started up suddenly from my place, and beheld with great confusion before my face, the statue of Epicurus in the ny che where I had fallen asleep. As soon as I had recovered myself I went away with pleasing alacrity to assist in the sowing of my turnip. Felix ille animi divisque simillimus ipsis |