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My state of health and my experience, permitted me longer to solicit in my native Country, the slender resources which I was on the point of losing there, nor to go abroad in quest of them. Besides, the nature of the labours in which I had engaged could not possibly interest any Minister in my favour. I thought of presenting to public view such of them as I deemed most calculated to merit the protection of Government. I published my STUDIES OF NATURE. I have the consolation of believing that I have, in that Work, confuted sundry dangerous errors, and demonstrated some important truths. Their success has procured for me, without solicitation, a great many compliments on the part of the public, and some annual marks of favour from the crown, but of so little solidity that a slight revolution in an administration has stripped me of most of them, and together with them, what is much more vexatious, some others of still higher consideration which I had enjoyed for fourteen years. Court favour had the semblance of doing me good; the benevolence of the Public has given a more steady support to me and to my Work. To it I am indebted for a transient tranquillity and repose; and under these auspices I send into the world this first Book, entitled THE GAULS, to serve as an introduction to the Arcadia.

I have not enjoyed the satisfaction of talking on the subject of it to John James. It was rather too rude for the placidness of our conversations. But rough and wild as it may be, it is an opening in the rocks, from whence there is a glimpse

glimpse of the valley in which he sometimes reposed. Nay when he set out, without bidding me farewel, for Ermenonville, where he closed his days, I tried to recal myself to him by the image of Arcadia, and by the recollection of our ancient intercourse, in concluding the letter which I wrote to him with these two verses from Virgil, changing only a single word.

Atque utiunm ex vobis unus tecumque fuissem
Aut custos gregis, aut maturæ vinitor uvæ !

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ARCADIA.

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ARCADIA.

BOOK FIRST

THE GAULS.

A LITTLE before the autumnal Equinox, Tirteus, a shepherd of Arcadia, was feeding his flock on one of the heights of Mount Lyceum, which projects along the gulph of Messenia. He was seated under the shade of some pine-trees at the foot of a rock, from whence he contemplated, at a distance, the Sea agitated by the winds of the South. It's olive-coloured waves were whitened with foam, which fell back in girandoles the whole length of the strand. The fishing boats, appearing and disappearing alternately between the swelling surges, ventured, at the risk of running aground on the beach, to trust their safety to their insignificance; whereas large vessels, in full sail, under the violent pressure of the winds, kept at a cautious distance, from the dread of being shipwrecked. At the bottom of the gulph, crowds of women and children raised their hands to Heaven, and uttered the cries of solicitude at sight of the danger which threatened those poor mariners, and of the succession of billows which rolled from the sea, and broke with a noise like thunder on the rocks of Steniclaros. The echoes of Mount Lyceum reverberated their hoarse and confused roarings from all quarters, with so much exactness that Tirteus

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Tirteus, at times turned round his head, imagining that the tempest was behind him, and that the Sea was breaking on the top of the mountain. But the cries of the coots and the sea-gulls, which came flapping their wings to seek refuge there, and the flashes of lightning which furrowed the Horizon, soon made him sensible that safety was on the dry land, and that the tempest was still more dreadful at a distance than it appeared to his view.

Tirteus compassionated the destiny of seamen, and pronounced that of the shepherd to be blessed, as it in some degree resembled that of the Gods by placing tranquillity in his heart, and the tempest under his feet.

While he was expressing his gratitude to Heaven, two men of a noble deportment appeared on the great road which winded below, toward the base of the mountain. One of them was in the full vigour of life, and the other still in the bloom of youth. They were walking with great speed, like travellers impatient to reach their object. As soon as they were within hearing, the elder of the two called to Tirteus, asking if they were not on the road to Argos. But the noise of the wind among the pines preventing his voice from being heard, the younger ascended towards the shepherd, and cried aloud to him: "Father, are we not upon "the road to Argos?" "My son," replied Tirteus, "I do not know where Argos lies. You are in "Arcadia, upon the road to Tegeum, and these "towers which you see before you are the towers "of Bellemine.' While they were talking, a shagged dog, young and frolicsome, which accom

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