186 Reasons for Retirement. [August> 



we shall most probably find that he has sought retirement in some of the 

 remote regions in Banco Regis. There in imenviable durance walks our 

 melancholy friend, apostrophising his present dwelling, with its " deep 

 solitudes and awful cells ;" execrating the inhumanity of his creditors, 

 and condemning the policy of our laws, which, in the land of freedom, 

 for a paltry debt, deprives a gentleman of his luxuries and his liberty. 

 Oh ! ye creditors, be ye tailors or tobacconists, dealers in necessaries, or 

 retailers of luxuries — panders of licentiousness, or high-priests of fashion, 

 ye are equally a hard-hearted and flinty-souled generation. — Ye offer 

 credit, to allure persons to purchase your high-priced commodities, and 

 then imprison the unhappy debtor for having no means of payment. 

 This, though the last example of retirement , is the most unendurable 

 state of all. In those instances which we have enumerated, if the retire- 

 ment should become irksome, there is an expectation of a deliverance. 

 If the citizen, after being used to a life of bustle and anxiety, finds no 

 pleasure in one of tranquillity and indolence, he can easily return to his 

 old habits with increased application. The man of rank, fortune, or 

 fashion, after the endurance of a few years of voluntary exile, may rea- 

 sonably hope that his estate has been put to nurse to some purpose, and 

 that he may again enjoy the pleasures which have formed so large a 

 portion of his existence. That actors may emerge from their retire- 

 ment with impunity, will be believed by the most unbelieving. 

 Actresses do so occasionally when their marriages have not proved so for- 

 tunate as they expected. There are instances also on record of foreigners, 

 after having spent the best portion of their ill-gotten gains, doing us the 

 honour of paying us a second visit, and thereby realizing a second har- 

 vest. Statesmen, in the ups and downs of politics, manage, we know to 

 the national cost, to get power and place again into their hands. In 

 fact, if a retired member turns his coat at a favourable opportunity, and 

 gives up his principles at a momentous crisis, nothing is so likely as his 

 being reinstated in all the honours and emoluments of office. Public 

 delinquents, who have retired from their important avocations, return 

 sometimes from transportation — except in Scotland, where that offence 

 has been hitherto unheard of. It is possible that a man of property, in 

 the duration of time, may return to the delights of the town after a re- 

 tirement of a few years. Such things do occur, there is a prospect of 

 change for all. But for the imfortunate being whose poverty or whose 

 carelessness has immured him within four stone walls, if he cannot get 

 a friend to advance the desired amount, or his creditors will not be pre- 

 vailed upon to give him his liberty — or if a shower of gold does not drop 

 from the clouds — his retirement , he is well aware, will only cease when 

 the hand of death cancels all obligations between debtor and creditor. 



All these individuals have different opinions with regard to the subject 

 of this paper ; it is only the man of education, of taste, of genius, or of 

 feeling, who possesses a proper idea of the moral advantages and intel- 

 lectual pleasures which are comprised in that one word — retirement. 



F. W. 



