Solitude, indeed, not only tranquillizes the heart, renders it kind and virtuous, and raises it above the malevolence of envy, wickedness, and conceited ignorance, but affords advantages still more valuable. Liberty, true liberty, flies from the tumultuous crowd, and the forced connexions of the world. It has been truly observed, that in solitude man recovers from the distraction which had torn him from himself; feels a clear conception of what he once was, and may yet become; explores the nature, and discovers the extent, of his freeborn character: rejects every thing artificial; is guided by his own sentiments; no longer dreads a severe master or imperious tyrant; and neither suffers the constraints of business or the blandishments of pleasure, to disturb his repose; but, breaking boldly through the shackles of servile habit and arbitrary custom, thinks for himself with confidence and courage, and improves the sensibility of his heart by the sentiments of his mind. Madame de Stael considered it a great error, to imagine that freedom and liberty could be indulged at court, where the mind, even on the most trifling occasions, is obliged to observe a multitude of ceremonies, where it is impossible to speak one’s thoughts, where our sentiments must be adapted to those around us, where every person assumes a control over us, and where we never have the smallest enjoyment of ourselves. “To enjoy ourselves,” says she, “we must seek solitude. It was in the Bastile that I first became acquainted with myself.” A courtier, fearful of every person around him, is continually upon the watch, and tormented incessantly by suspicion; but while his heart is thus a prey to corroding anxiety, he is obliged to appear contented and serene, and, like the old lady, is always lighting one taper to Michael the archangel, and another to the devil, because he does not know for which of them he may have most occasion. A man of a liberal, enlightened mind, is as little calculated to perform the office of master of the ceremonies, or to conduct the etiquette of a court, as a woman is to be _a religieuse_.