BY JOHN WILDE, ES ADvocate, FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY, AND PROFESSOR OF CIVIL LAW IN THE LONDON: PRINTED FOR T. CADELL, AND PETER HILL, EDINBURGH 1793. To WILLIAM CARLYLE, Efq. You remember, my dear friend, my having faid, in the days of our earlier intimacy, that the first work I should publish, and with my name, I fhould dedicate to you. This declaration was made at a time of life, when my future years dan,ced before me in all the gay colours of the element; when youthful hope felt every obftacle only as the young eagle feels the oppofing breeze, and when even the utmost horizon of mental enjoyment was skirted with the richest livery of fancy. Some years (not very many) have paffed over us fince; and they have brought their changes along with them. Yet they have not much altered me; and you, perhaps, they have altered ftill lefs. With a mind averfe to buftle, and with a heart whose strings were never tuned to any high strains of ambition, your wishes were always far beneath your talents; perhaps, and for that very reason, beneath your duties alfo. You have relinquished a proceffion for which you were early destined and highly qualified; qualified in every way except the inclination. In the retirement of a country life, and occupied in your favourite country a 2 country labours, I know you experience that pla cid enjoyment, which is of all others the moft delightful to your heart; but which still might have been mingled with purfuits, not more honourable, yet more active; and which leading to greater eminence in life, would (in a mind like yours) have in no way impaired thofe feelings, or weakened thofe difpofitions, that were to adorn and exhilarate the years of declining age. You have, however, made your choice; and fince you were refolved, it is perhaps as well that you made the choice fo early. You are neither a man of folitude, nor a man of change. You have not retired to live like a hermit, but to enjoy fociety in the way you like it beft. Your friends are fure of your happinefs; they can only regret (what you will not regret along with them) your fame. For myfelf, (if you have at all erred) I have finned perhaps in the contrary extreme. While the pursuit of my objects has been (generally taken) always measured and regulated, yet I certainly thought that circumftances were more eafily maftered, than circumstances either are, or ever ought to be. I have found that both men and things are not (as indeed they ought not) to be estimated in all refpects, by the fanguine calculations of untutored arithmetic. Even after experience fhould have made me wifer, my only confolation has been, that wisdom, when it does come, never comes too late. Yet though I have been fometimes mistaken in the fum |