Solitude and philosophy may inspire sentiments which appear ludicrous to the eye of worldly folly, but they banish all light and insignificant ideas, and prepare the mind for the grandest and most sublime conceptions. Those who are in the habit of studying great and exalted characters, of cultivating refined and elevated sentiments, unavoidably contract a singularity of manners which may furnish ample materials for ridicule. Romantic characters always view things differently from what they really are or can be; and the habit of invariably contemplating the sublime and beautiful, renders them, in the eyes of the weak and wicked, insipid and unsupportable. Men of this disposition always acquire a high and dignified demeanor, which shocks the feelings of the vulgar; but it is not on that account the less meritorious. Certain Indian philosophers annually quitted their solitude to visit the palace of their sovereign, where each of them, in his turn, delivered his advice upon the government of the state, and upon the changes and limitations which might be made in the laws; but he who three successive times communicated false or unimportant observations, lost for one year, the privilege of appearing in the presence-chamber. This practice is well calculated to prevent the mind from growing romantic: but there are many philosophers of a different description, who if they had the same opportunity, would not meet with better success. Plotinus requested the emperor Gallienus to confer on him a small city in Campania, and the territory appendant to it, promising to retire to it with his friends and followers, and to realise in the government of it the Republic of Plato. It happened then, however, as it frequently happens now in many courts, to philosophers much less chimerical than Plotinus; the statesmen laughed at the proposal, and told the emperor that the philosopher was a fool, in whose mind even experience had produced no effect.