e privilege of having fewer witnesses to a life of
folly. He who is not sufficiently important to be disturbed in his
pursuits, but spends all his hours according to his own inclination, and
has more hours than his mental faculties enable him to fill either with
enjoyment or desires, can have nothing to demand of shades and valleys.
As bravery is said to be a panoply, insignificancy is always a shelter.

There are, however, pleasures and advantages in a rural situation, which
are not confined to philosophers and heroes. The freshness of the air,
the verdure of the woods, the paint of the meadows, and the unexhausted
variety which summer scatters upon the earth, may easily give delight to
an unlearned spectator. It is not necessary that he who looks with
pleasure on the colours of a flower should study the principles of
vegetation, or that the Ptolemaick and Copernican system should be
compared before the light of the sun can gladden, or its warmth
invigorate. Novelty is itself a source of gratification; and Milton
justly observes, that to him who has been long pent up in cities, no
rural object can be presented, which will not delight or refresh some of
his senses.

Yet even these easy pleasures are missed by the greater part of those
who waste their summer in the country. Should any man pursue his
acquaintances to their retreats, he would find few of them listening to
Philomel, loitering in woods, or plucking daisies, catching the healthy
gale of the morning, or watching the gentle coruscations of declining
day. Some will be discovered at a window by the road side, rejoicing
when a new cloud of dust gathers towards them, as at the approach of a
momentary supply of conversation, and a short relief from the
tediousness of unideal vacancy. Others are placed in the adjacent
villages, where they look only upon houses as in the rest of the year,
with no change of objects but what a remove to any new street in London
might have given them. The same set of acquaintances still settle
together, and the form of life is not otherwise diversified than by
doing the same things in a different place. They pay and receive visits
in the usual form, they frequent the walks in the morning, they deal
cards at night, they attend to the same tattle, and dance with the same
partners; nor can they, at their return to their former habitation,
congratulate themselves on any other advantage, than that they have
passed their time like others of t