The florist, the planter, the gardener, the
husbandman, when they are only as accomplishments to the man of
fortune, are great reliefs to a country life, and many ways useful
to those who are possessed of them.
But of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill
up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining
authors. But this I shall only touch upon, because it in some
measure interferes with the third method, which I shall propose in
another paper, for the employment of our dead, inactive hours, and
which I shall only mention in general to be the pursuit of
knowledge.
NEXT ESSAY
- Hoc est
Vivere bis, vita posse priore frui.
MART., Ep. x. 23.
The present joys of life we doubly taste,
By looking back with pleasure to the past.
The last method which I proposed in my Saturday's paper, for filing
up those empty spaces of life which are so tedious and burthensome
to idle people, is the employing ourselves in the pursuit of
knowledge. I remember Mr. Boyle, speaking of a certain mineral,
tells us that a man may consume his whole life in the study of it
without arriving at the knowledge of all its qualities. The truth
of it is, there is not a single science, or any branch of it, that
might not furnish a man with business for life, though it were much
longer than it is.
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