known as Pennsylvania, whither he went with
a number of his co-religionists in 1682. After his return to
England, he suffered by the fall of James II., but under
William III. was acquitted of treason, and spent his later
years in retirement. He died at Ruscombe, in Berkshire, on
July 30, 1718. "Some Fruits of Solitude, or the Maxims of
William Penn," evidently the result of one of his sojourns in
prison, was licensed in 1693. It was followed by "More Fruits
of Solitude." The whole forms a collection of maxims which are
shrewd, wise, and charitable, informed with a good courage for
life, and a contempt for mean ends, if in their variety they
do not always escape the touch of the commonplace. The book
has become known as a favourite of R.L. Stevenson, who said of
it that "there is not the man living--no, nor recently
dead--that could put, with so lovely a spirit, so much honest,
kind wisdom into words."

_TO THE READER_

Reader, this Enchiridion I present thee which is the fruit of solitude;
a school few care to learn in, though none instructs us better. Some
parts of it are the result of serious reflection; others the flashings
of lucid intervals. Writ for private satisfaction, and now published for
an help to human conduct.

The author blesseth God for his retirement, and kisses that Gentle Hand
which led him into it; for though it should prove barren to the world,
it can never do so to him.

He has now had some time he could call his own; a property he was never
so much master of before; in which he has taken a view of himself and
the world; and observed wherein he hath hit and mist the mark; what
might have been done, what mended, and what avoided in his human
conduct; together with the omissions and excesses of others, as well
societies and governments, as private families and persons. And he
verily thinks, were he to live over his life again, he could not only,
with God's grace, serve Him, but his neighbour and himself, better than
he hath done, and have seven years of his time to spare. And yet perhaps
he hath not been the worst or the idlest man in the world, nor is he the
oldest. And this is the rather said, that it might quicken thee, reader,
to lose none of the time that is yet thine.

There is nothing of which we are apt to be so lavish as of time, and
about which we ought to be more solicitous; since without it we can do
no