'2S4 Reverie, considered as 



But common minds, conscious of their inferior 

 strength, and of their greater aptitude to be 

 interrupted, should cultivate letters in places, 

 where the fewest and the weakest stimuli are. 

 applied ; — in the shade, remote from noise, 

 and not exposed to passing objects. Colbert^s 

 having said that his mind was always most 

 active in the midst of Paris, if not fully solved 

 in the former part of this essay, may be con- 

 sidered as a proof, that that minister possessed 

 a warm imagination, guarded by a vigorous 

 intellect; — that he was willing to give loose 

 to the wanderings of fancy, in the midst of 

 rural leisure : but ever associated the recollec- 

 tion of want of time, and fulness of occupation 

 in the metropolis, with the first aberration of 

 •thought from the subject he had before him. — 

 Besides, it is reasonable to suppose, that the 

 studies, of Colbert, when in Paris, were con-, 

 fined to the politics of the day ; a subject 

 which, by engaging every passion, must have 

 entirely engrossed attention, and deadened the 

 force of external stimuli: whereas his rural 

 lucubrations had, probably, for their subject, 

 topics of speculative philosophy, less interest- 

 ing, less relating to self and immediate concern; 

 and therefore less endowed with the powder of 

 detaining the mind, prone to her favourite 

 sallies of digression from her main employment. 



