FRANCIS WILLUGHBY. 131 



vice. May persons of every class in society be 

 constantly actuated by a similar persuasion, and 

 dread the first hour that shall find them unengaged 

 in some interesting and useful pursuit, as most 

 certainly exposing them to the seductions of self- 

 indulgence in animal pleasures ; whose syren 

 voice, unless guarded against with the forethought 

 and decision of the prince of Ithaca, may disable 

 its captive listener from refusal or retreat, and 

 involve him in a destruction more calamitous 

 than that which strewed, with bones and corrup- 

 tion, the rocks and caverns of Pelorus ! He had 

 happily become convinced, that the only method 

 whereby the mind can be preserved free from the 

 solicitations of inordinate desires, and be kept 

 both innocent and cheerful, is to occupy it with 

 those pursuits which are conducive to a course 

 of virtue and usefulness. 



The excellence of his choice will become more 

 apparent, if it be considered to what powerful 

 temptations he must have been exposed from 

 station and affluence ; temptations increased in 

 number and force by the state of his times, which 

 offered him the excitement of political partisan- 

 ship, or those coarse and dissolute pleasures to 

 which persons of his position in society were 

 then too generally addicted. 



It should also be remembered, that the depart- 

 ments to which he devoted his time and energies, 

 were then, comparatively, unexplored, and so 

 new was one of them to the world generally, 

 namely, the study of insects, that even at the 



