2793- on Epicurus. 255. 
countenance, and-down unto his girdle was his beard 
of grey, that yielded to the breeze as he walked for- 
ward to salute me. By-the trick of his face, and my 
remembrance of seals and statues, I knew him to be 
the antagonist of Zeno. 
I was overawed, but | was not afraid. 
- In silence I bowed to him, and he saluted me by 
my name. 
Ascanius, said he with a smile beyond the power 
of a Guercino or a Rheynolds to exprefs, I am come 
to visit you on your birth day, and to thank you for 
not listening to the calumniators of my life, my wri- 
tings and my character. 
From your ewn happy experience, you are able 
to sit in judgement on my judges, and to know that 
dirt, affectation of apathy, maceration of body, ob- 
stinacy in opinion, and the imputation of mutability 
and pafsion to the infinite and eternal spirit of the u- 
niverse, are not the ways to reform mankind, and to 
make them conformable to the eternal and beautiful 
order of nature, pofscfsing their bodies in healthful 
vigour by the rational use of all their faculties, and 
their souls in tranquillity by the practice of vir- 
tue. ; 
I came forth into the world at atime when the 
wealth of nations founded on free government, and 
the subdivision of useful employment, had long af- 
forded leisure for fanciful inquiry. 
I had a strong‘propensity to rational curiosity my= 
self, and 1 withed to promote it in others.—Af- 
‘ter much study and contemplation, I founded .a 
' school, and finding it impofsible as an honest man to 
