“As Helvidius was making an excursion among the mountains, stretching to the east of Moelshiabod, he arrived at the bridge, across a small rivulet; and sitting down upon the grass, fell asleep under the shade of a large holly tree. He awoke just as the sun was sinking in the horizon; a slight shower succeeded; all nature became renovated; and the perfumes, which embalmed the air, seemed even capable of wafting him to the Elysian Fields. The tree, beneath which he reposed, stood in a valley, matchless even in the Island of Madagascar; and the cones of several mountains gave an air of grandeur to the perspective, which nature has forbidden in most other regions. He was lost, as it were, in the enthusiasm of his admiration! At that moment Lord — passed in his coach, apparently insensible to the scenes through which he was conveyed. Oh! how an indiscriminate mingling with men blunts the best feelings of the human heart! ‘Had his Lordship,’ thought Helvidius, ‘seen these lovely pictures, even a thousand and a thousand times before, he might have derived enjoyment from witnessing them again; since it is the autumnal season of the year; and the woods, and shrubs growing out of the rocks, are variegated in a manner that even Salvator Rosa would have loved to look upon them!’ “Though Helvidius was mortified at this insensibility on the part of the statesman, and felt so ready to condemn his taste and want of sensibility, he was weak enough to feel more at war with himself than with him; and began seriously to question which were the wiser of the two; the man who loves, or he who neglects, the varied objects of the material world. ‘He is a Peer,’ exclaimed he to himself, ‘a man of education,—a statesman,—one who is looked up to in the world, as being, in a manner, pre-eminent over his species:—he seems to have little relish for all these objects, which I have been looking upon with such enthusiasm. It must be folly and weakness in me, therefore, to indulge this humour; a humour, which, from what I have seen of mankind, I am sensible that most men, who look not up through every object they see, to the Architect that makes it, would esteem frivolous and idle, if not criminal. There are no silver mines here: nor does this rivulet leave any gold-dust upon its shores!’ He sat down mortified. To dissipate his chagrin, he took a volume of Epictetus out of his pocket, and opening the book, his eye alighted upon the following passage. ‘As when you see an asp in a golden casket, you do not esteem that asp happy, because it is inclosed in materials so costly and so magnificent, but despise and would shun it, on account of its venom: so, when you see vice lodged in the midst of wealth and the swelling pride of fortune, be not struck with the splendour of the materials, with which it is surrounded, but despise the gross alloy of its manners and sentiments.’ Upon reading this passage,