Eclogues, which are representatives of rural happiness in its highest perfection, are also fictions; but they are fictions of the most pleasing and agreeable kind. True felicity must be sought in retirement, where the soul, disengaged from the torments of the world, no longer feels those artificial desires which render it unhappy both in prospect and fruition. Content with little, satisfied with all, surrounded by love and innocence, we perceive in retirement, the golden age, as described by the poets, revived; while in the world every one regrets its loss. The regret however, is unjust; for those enjoyments were not peculiar to that happy period; and each individual may, whenever he pleases, form his own Arcadia. The beauties of a crystal spring, a silent grove, a daisied meadow, chasten the feelings of the heart, and afford at all times, to those who have a taste for nature, a permanent and pure delight. “The origin of poetry,” says Pope, “is ascribed to that age which succeeded the creation of the world: as the keeping of flocks seems to have been the first employment of mankind, the most ancient sort of poetry was pastoral. It is natural to imagine, that the leisure of these ancient shepherds admitting and inviting some diversion, none was so proper to that solitary and sedentary life as singing, and that in their songs they took occasion to celebrate their own felicity. From hence a poem was invented, and afterward improved to a perfect image of that happy time, which, by giving us an esteem for the virtues of a former age, might recommend them to the present.” These agreeable though fictitious descriptions of the age of innocence and virtue, communicate joy and gladness to our hearts; and we bless the poet, who, in the ecstacy of his felicity contributes to render others as happy as himself. Sicily and Zurich have produced two of these benefactors to mankind. The aspect of nature never appears more charming, the bosom never heaves with such sweet delight, the heart never beats more pleasantly, the soul never feels more perfect happiness than is produced by reading the Idylls of Theocritus and Gessner. By these easy simple modes the beauties of nature are made, by the assistance of the imagination, to operate forcibly on the heart. The mind, indeed, drawn away by these agreeable images, often resigns itself too easily to the illusions of romance; but the ideas they create generally amend the heart without injuring the understanding, and spread some of the sweetest flowers along the most thorny paths of human life.