Solitude not only creates simplicity of manners, but prepares and strengthens the faculties for the toils of busy life. Fostered in the bosom of retirement, the mind becomes more active in the world and its concerns, and retires again into tranquillity to repose itself, and prepare for new conflicts. Pericles, Phocion, and Epaminondas, laid the foundation of all their greatness in solitude, and acquired there rudiments, which all the language of the schools cannot teach--the rudiments of their future lives and actions. Pericles, while preparing his mind for any important object, never appeared in public, but immediately refrained from feasting, assemblies, and every species of entertainment; and during the whole time that he administered the affairs of the republic, he only went once to sup with a friend, and left him at an early hour. Phocion immediately resigned himself to the study of philosophy: not from the ostentatious motive of being called a _wise man_, but to enable himself to conduct the business of the state with greater resolution and effect. Epaminondas, who had passed his whole life in the delights of literature, and in the improvement of his mind, astonished the Thebans by the military skill and dexterity which he all at once displayed at the battles of Mantinea and Leuctra, in the first of which he rescued his friend Pelopidas: but it was owing to the frugal use he made of his time, to the attention with which he devoted his mind to every pursuit he adopted, and to that solitude which his relinquishment of every public employment afforded him. His countrymen, however, forced him to abandon his retreat, gave him the absolute command of the army; and by his military skill, he saved the republic.