handsome enough, with a fireplace very commodiously contrived, and
plenty of light: and were I not more afraid of the trouble than the
expense--the trouble that frights me from all business, I could very
easily adjoin on either side, and on the same floor, a gallery of an
hundred paces long, and twelve broad, having found walls already
raised for some other design, to the requisite height.

Every place of retirement requires a walk: my thoughts sleep if I sit
still; my fancy does not go by itself, as when my legs move it: and
all those who study without a book are in the same condition. The
figure of my study is round, and there is no more open wall than what
is taken up by my table and my chair, so that the remaining parts of
the circle present me a view of all my books at once, ranged upon five
rows of shelves around about me. It has three noble and free
prospects, and is sixteen paces in diameter I am not so continually
there in winter; for my house is built upon an eminence, as its name
imports, and no part of it is so much exposed to the wind and weather
as this, which pleases me the better, as being of more difficult
access and a little remote, as well upon the account of exercise, as
also being there more retired from the crowd. 'Tis there that I am in
my kingdom, and there I endeavor to make myself an absolute monarch,
and to sequester this one corner from all society, conjugal, filial,
and civil; elsewhere I have but verbal authority only, and of a
confused essence. That man, in my opinion, is very miserable, who has
not a home where to be by himself, where to entertain himself alone,
or to conceal himself from others. Ambition sufficiently plagues her
proselytes, by keeping them always in show, like the statue of a
public square: "Magna servitus est magna fortuna." They can not so
much as be private in the water-closet. I have thought nothing so
severe in the austerity of life that our monks affect, as what I have
observed in some of their communities; namely, by rule to have a
perpetual society of place, and numerous persons present in every
action whatever: and think it much more supportable to be always
alone, than never to be so.

If any one shall tell me that it is to undervalue the muses, to make
use of them only for sport and to pass away the time, I shall tell
him, that he does not know, so well as I, the value of the sport, the
pleasure, and the pastime; I can hardly forbear to add that all other