[Illustration] SOLITUDE: BY JOHN G. ZIMMERMAN. With the Life of the Author. [Illustration] IN TWO PARTS. NEW-YORK:--C. WELLS. 56, Gold-street. 1840. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE. PART I. Life of the author 9 I. Introduction, 15 II. Influence of solitude upon the mind, 19 III. Influence of solitude upon the heart, 60 IV. General advantages of retirement, 109 V. Advantages of solitude in exile, 134 VI. Advantages of solitude in old age and on the bed of death, 138 PART II. I. Introduction, 149 II. Of the motives to solitude, 157 III. Disadvantages of solitude, 185 IV. Influence of solitude on the imagination, 200 V. Effects of solitude on a melancholy mind, 216 VI. Influence of solitude on the passions, 235 VII. Of the danger of idleness in solitude, 274 VIII. Conclusion, 279 PREFACE. Weak and delicate minds may, perhaps, be alarmed by the title of this work. The word _solitude_, may possibly engender melancholy ideas; but they have only to read a few pages to be undeceived. The author is not one of those extravagant misanthropists who expect that men, formed by nature for the enjoyments of society, and impelled continually towards it by a multitude of powerful and invincible propensities, should seek refuge in forests, and inhabit the dreary cave or lonely cell; he is a friend to the species, a rational philosopher, and the virtuous citizen, who, encouraged by the esteem of his sovereign, endeavors to enlighten the minds of his fellow creatures upon a subject of infinite importance to them, the attainment of true felicity. No writer appears more completely convinced than M. Zimmerman, that man is born for society, or feels its duties with more refined sensibility.