CHAPTER V.

_Advantages of solitude in exile._

The advantages of solitude are not confined to rank, or fortune, or to circumstances. Fragrant breezes, magnificent forests, richly tinted meadows, and that endless variety of beautiful objects which the birth of spring spreads over the face of nature, enchant not only philosophers, kings, and heroes, but ravish the mind of the meanest spectator with exquisite delight. An English author has very justly observed, that “it is not necessary that he who looks with pleasure on the color of a flower, should study the principles of vegetation; or that the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems should be compared, before the light of the sun can gladden, or its warmth invigorate. Novelty in itself is a source of gratification; and Milton justly observes, that to him who has been long pent up in cities, no rural object can be presented which will not delight or refresh some of his senses.”

Exiles themselves frequently experience the advantages and enjoyments of solitude. Instead of the world from which they are banished, they form, in the tranquillity of retirement, a new world for themselves; forget the false joys and fictitious pleasures which they followed in the zenith of greatness, habituate their minds to others of a nobler kind, more worthy the attention of rational beings; and to pass their days with tranquillity, invent a variety of innocent felicities, which are only thought of at a distance from society, far removed from all consolation, far from their country, their families, and their friends.

But exiles, if they wish to insure happiness in retirement, must, like other men, fix their minds upon some one object, and adopt the pursuit of it in such a way as to revive their buried hopes, or to excite the prospect of approaching pleasure.

Maurice, prince of Isenbourg, distinguished himself by his courage during a service of twenty years under Ferdinand, duke of Brunswick, and Marshal Broglio, and in the war between the Russians and the Turks. Health and repose were sacrificed to the gratification of his ambition and love of glory. During his service in the Russian army, he fell under the displeasure of the empress, and was sent into exile. The calamitous condition to which persons exiled by this government are reduced is well known; but this philosophic prince contrived to render even a Russian banishment agreeable. While oppressed both in body and mind by the painful reflections which his situation at first created, and reduced by his anxieties to a mere skeleton, he accidentally met with the little essay written by Lord Bolingbroke on the subject of Exile. He read it several times, and, “in proportion to the number of times I read,” said the prince, in the preface to the elegant and nervous translation he made of this work, “I felt all my sorrows and disquietudes vanish.”

This essay by Lord Bolingbroke upon exile, is a master-piece of stoic philosophy and fine writing. He there boldly examines all the adversities of life. “Let us,” says he, “set all our past and present afflictions at once before our eyes: let us resolve to overcome them instead of flying from them, or wearing out the sense of them with long and ignominious patience. Instead of palliating remedies, let us use the incision knife and the caustic, search the wound to the bottom, and work an immediate and radical cure.”

Perpetual banishment, like uninterrupted solitude, certainly strengthens the powers of the mind, and enables the sufferer to collect sufficient force to support his misfortunes. Solitude, indeed, becomes an easy situation to those exiles who are inclined to indulge the pleasing sympathies of the heart; for they then experience pleasures that were before unknown, and from that moment forget those they tasted in the more flourishing and prosperous conditions of life.

Brutus, when he visited the banished Marcellus in his retreat at Mitylene, found him enjoying the highest felicities of which human nature is susceptible, and devoting his time, as before his banishment, to the study of every useful science. Deeply impressed by the example this unexpected scene afforded, he felt, on his return, that it was Brutus who was exiled, and not Marcellus whom he left behind. Quintus Metellus Numidicus had experienced the like fate a few years before. While the Roman people, under the guidance of Marius were laying the foundation of that tyranny which Cesar afterward completed, Metellus, singly, in the midst of an alarmed senate, and surrounded by an enraged populace, refused to take the oath imposed by the pernicious laws of the tribune Saturnius; and his intrepid conduct was converted, by the voice of faction, into a high crime against the state; for which he was dragged from his senatorial seat by the licentious rabble, exposed to the indignity of a public impeachment, and sentenced to perpetual exile. The more virtuous citizens, however, took arms in his defence, and generously resolved rather to perish than behold their country unjustly deprived of so much merit: but this magnanimous Roman, whom no persuasion could induce to do wrong, declined to increase the confusion of the commonwealth by encouraging resistance, conceiving it a duty he owed to the laws, not to suffer any sedition to take place on his account. Contenting himself with protesting his innocence, and sincerely lamenting the public phrenzy, he exclaimed, as Plato had done before during the distractions of the Athenian commonwealth, “If the times should mend, I shall recover my station; if not, it is a happiness to be absent from Rome;” and departed without regret into exile, fully convinced of its advantages to a mind incapable of finding repose except on foreign shores, and which at Rome must have been incessantly tortured by the hourly sight of a sickly state and an expiring republic.

Rutilius also, feeling the same contempt for the sentiments and manners of the age, voluntarily withdrew himself from the corrupted metropolis of the republic. Asia had been defended by his integrity and courage against the ruinous and oppressive extortion of the publicans. These noble and spirited exertions, which he was prompted to make not only from his high sense of justice, but in the honourable discharge of the particular duties of his office, drew on him the indignation of the equestrian order, and excited the animosity of the faction which supported the interests of Marius. They induced the vile and infamous Apicius to become the instrument of his destruction. He was accused of corruption; and as the authors and abettors of this false accusation sat as judges on his trial, Rutilius, the most innocent and virtuous citizen of the republic, was of course condemned: for, indeed, he scarcely condescended to defend the cause. Seeking an asylum in the east, this truly respectable Roman, whose merits were not only overlooked, but traduced, by his ungrateful country, was every where received with profound veneration and unqualified applause. He had however, before the term of his exile expired, an opportunity of exhibiting the just contempt he felt for the treatment he had received; for when Sylla earnestly solicited him to return to Rome, he not only refused to comply with his request, but removed his residence to a greater distance from his infatuated country.

Cicero, however, who possessed in an eminent degree all the resources and sentiments which are necessary to render solitude pleasant and advantageous, is a memorable exception to these instances of happy and contented exiles. This eloquent patriot, who had been publicly proclaimed, “the saviour of his country,” who had pursued his measures with undaunted perseverance, in defiance of the open menaces of a desperate faction, and the concealed daggers of hired assassins, sunk into dejection and dismay under a sentence of exile. The strength of his constitution had long been impaired by incessant anxiety and fatigue; and the terrors of banishment so oppressed his mind, that he lost all his powers, and became, from the deep melancholy into which it plunged him, totally incapable of adopting just sentiments, or pursuing spirited measures. By this weak and unmanly conduct he disgraced an event by which Providence intended to render his glory complete. Undetermined where to go, or what to do, he lamented, with effeminate sighs and childish tears, that he could now no longer enjoy the luxuries of his fortune, the splendor of his rank, or the charms of his popularity. Weeping over the ruins of his magnificent mansion, which Clodius levelled with the ground, and groaning for the absence of his wife, Terentia, whom he soon afterward repudiated, he suffered the deepest melancholy to seize upon his mind: became a prey to the most inveterate grief; complained with bitter anguish of wants, which, if supplied, would have afforded him no enjoyment; and acted, in short, so ridiculously, that both his friends and his enemies concluded that adversity had deranged his mind. Cesar beheld with secret and malignant pleasure, the man who had refused to act as his lieutenant, suffering under the scourge of Clodius. Pompey hoped that all sense of _his_ ingratitude would be effaced by the contempt and derision to which a benefactor, whom he had shamefully abandoned, thus meanly exposed his character. Atticus himself, whose mind was bent on magnificence and money, and who, by his temporizing talents, endeavored to preserve the friendship of all parties, without enlisting in any, blushed for the unmanly conduct of Cicero; and in the censorial style of Cato, instead of his own plausible dialect, severely reproached him for continuing so meanly attached to his former fortunes. Solitude had no influence over a mind so weak and depressed as to turn the worst side of every subject to its view. He died, however, with greater heroism than he lived; “approach, old soldier!” cried he, from his litter, to Popilius Lœnas, his former client and present murderer, “and, if you have the courage, take my life.”

“These instances,” says Lord Bolingbroke, “show that as change of place, simply considered, can render no man unhappy; so the other evils which are objected to exile, either cannot happen to wise and virtuous men, or, if they do happen to them, cannot render them miserable. Stones are hard, and cakes of ice are cold, and all who feel them feel alike; but the good or the bad events which fortune brings upon us, are felt according to the qualities that we, not they, possess. They are in themselves indifferent and common accidents, and they acquire strength by nothing but our vice or our weakness. Fortune can dispense neither felicity nor infelicity, unless we co-operate with her. Few men who are unhappy under the loss of an estate, would be happy in the possession of it; and those who deserve to enjoy the advantages which exile takes away, will not be unhappy when they are deprived of them.”

An exile, however, cannot hope to see his days glide quietly away in rural delights and philosophic repose, except he has conscientiously discharged those duties which he owed to the world, and given that example of rectitude to future ages which every character exhibits who is as great after his fall as he was at the most brilliant period of his prosperity.