A COUNTRY LIFE, 867

resolved to divert myself with other things, and to engage in some
business that might effectually tie me up from any more excursions
of this kind; for I found that thing return upon me chiefly when
Twas idle, had nothing to do, nor anything of moment immedi-
ately before me.

To this purpose I bought a little farm in the county of Bedford,
and resolved to remove myself thither. I had a little convenient
house upon it; and the land about it I found was capable of great
improvement, and that it was many ways suited to my inclination,
which delighted in cultivating, managing, planting, and improving
of land: and particularly, being an inland country, I was removed
from conversing among ships, sailors, and things relating to the
remote part of the world. In a word, I went down to my farm,
settled my family, bought me ploughs, harrows, a cart, waggon,
horses, cows, sheep, and, setting seriously to work, became in one
half year a mere country gentleman. My thoughts were entirely
taken up in managing my servants, oultivating the ground, enclos-
ing, planting, Ge.; and I lived, as I thought, the most agrecable
life that Nature was capable of directing, or that a man always
bred to misfortunes was capable of being retreated to.

I farmed upon my own land; I had no rent to pay, was limited
by no articles; I could pull up or cut down as I pleased ; what I
planted was for myself, and what I improved was for my family :
and having thus left off the thoughts of wandering, I had not the
least discomfort in any part of life, as to this world. Now I thought
indeed that I enjoyed the middle state of life that my father so
earnestly recommended to me, and lived a kind of heavenly life,
something like what is described by the poet upon the subject of a
country life :

Free from vices, free from care,
ge has no pain, and youth no snare.”

But in the middle of all this felicity, one blow from unforeseen
Providence unhinged me at once, and not only made a breach upon
me inevitable and incurable, but drove me by its consequences into
a deep relapse into the wandering disposition; which, as I may
say, being born in my very blood, soon recovered its hold of me,

and, like the returns of a violent distemper, came on with an
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