which extinguishes all rational reflection, and engenders the most fantastic vifions.

Turn we awhile on lonely man our eyes,
And fee what frantic fcenes of folly rife:
In fome dark monaftery's gloomy cells,
Where formal, felf-prefuming Virtue dwells,
Bedoz'd with dreams of grace-diftilling caves,
Of holy puddles, unconfuming graves,
Of animated plaster, wood, or stone,
And mighty cures by fainted finners done.
Permit me, mufe, ftill farther to explore,
And turn the leaves of SUPERSTITION o'er;
Where wonders upon wonders ever grow;
Chaos of zeal and blindness, mirth and woe;
Vifions of devils into monkeys turn'd,

That, hot from hell, roar at a finger burn'd;
Bottles of precious tears that faints have wept,
And breath a thousand years in phials kept;
Sun beams fent down to prop one friar's staff,
And hell broke loose to make another laugh;
Obedient fleas, and fuperftitious mice;
Confeffing wolves, and fanctifying lice; *

VOL. II.

M

Harrafs'd

* The abfurdities here pointed out, great and almost incredible as they may appear, were actually the confequences of an ill-formed and irrational Solitude, in St. Dominick, St. Caflino, St. Anthony, St. Colman, St. Francis, St. Munna, St. Firman, St. Columba, and Maria de la Vifitation, as may be feen by any who has fufficient phlegm to perufe "The Lives of the Saints ;" and ZIMMERMAN, in his original work on Solitude, has introduced an account of many other extravagances of the fame kind in the perfons of Molanus, Serapion, Hilarion, Jerome, and others; moft of which we have forborne to introduce

into

Harrafs'd by watchings, abftinence, and chains,
Strangers to joys, familiar grown with pains;
To all the means of virtue, they attend
With strictest care, and only miss the end.
For thus, when REASON ftagnates in the brain,
The dregs of FANCY cloud its pureft vein.

Men even of strong natural understandings, highly improved by education, have, in fome inftances, not been able to refift the fatal effects of intense application and long continued Solitude. The learned MOLANUS having, during a course of many years, detached his mind from all objects of fenfe, neglected all seasonable and falutary devotion, and given an uncontrouled licence to his imagination, fancied, in the latter part of his life, that he was a barley corn; and although he received his friends with great courtefy and politeness, and conversed upon subjects both of science and devotion with great ease and ingenuity, he could never afterwards be perfuaded to ftir from home, left, as he expreffed his apprehenfion, he should be pecked up in the ftreets, and swallowed by a fowl.

The female mind is ftill more fubject to these delufions of difordered fancy; for, as their feelings are more exquifite, their paffions warmer,

and

into this compilation, from the indecency of their illufions, and their tendency to corrupt the minds of youth.

and their imaginations more active than those of the other fex, SOLITUDE, when carried to excefs, affects them in a much greater degree. Their bofoms are much more fufceptible to the injurious influence of feclufion, to the contagion of example, and to the dangers of illufion. This may, perhaps, in fome degree, account for the fimilarity of difpofition which prevails in cloifters, and other inftitutions which confine women entirely to the company of each other. The force of example and habit is, indeed, in fuch retreats, furprizingly powerful. A French medical writer, of great merit, and undoubted veracity, relates, that, in a convent of nuns where the fifterhood was unusually numerous, one of these fecluded fair ones was feized with a ftrange impulfe to mew like a cat; that feveral others of the nuns in a fhort time followed her example; and that at length this unaccountable propenfity became general throughout the convent; the whole fifterhood joining, at ftated periods, in the practice of mewing, and continuing it for feveral hours. But of all the extraordinary fancies recorded of the sex, none can exceed that which CARDAN relates to have happened in one of the convents of Germany during the fifteenth century. One of the nuns, who had long been fecluded from the fight of man, was seized with the ftrange propenfity to M 2 bite

bite all her companions; and, extraordinary as it may feem, this difpofition fpread until the whole house was infected with the fame fury. The account, indeed, ftates, that this mania extended even beyond the walls of the convent, and that the difeafe was conveyed to fuch a degree from cloister to cloister, throughout Germany, Holland, and Italy, that the practice at length prevailed in every female convent in Eu

rope.

These inftances of the pernicious influence of a total dereliction of society, may poffibly appear to the understandings of the present generation extravagant and incredible; but they are certainly true; and many others, of a fimilar nature, might be adduced from the most authentic hiftories of the times. The fpecies, when prevented from enjoying a free intercourse and rational fociety with each other, almost change their nature; and the mind, feeding continually on the melancholy musings of the imagination in the cold and chearless regions of Solitude, engenders humours of the most excentric caft. Excluded from those focial communications which nature enjoins, with no means of gratifying the understanding, amusing the fenfes, or interefting the affections, fancy roves at large into unknown fpheres, and endeavours to find in ideal forms entertain

ment

ment and delight. Angelic vifions, infernal phantoms, amazing prodigies, the delufions of alchemy, the frenzies of philosophy, and the madness of metaphyfics, fill the disordered brain. The intellect faftens upon fome abfurd idea, and fofters it with the fondest affection, until its encreafing magnitude fubdues the remaining powers of fenfe and reason. The slightest retrofpect into the conduct of the folitary profeffions of every religious fyftem, proves the lamentable dangers to which they expofe their mental faculties, by excluding themselves from the intercourses of rational fociety. From the prolific womb of Solitude fprung all the mysterious ravings and fenfelefs doctrines of the New Platonifts. The fame caufe devoted the monks and anchorites of the Chriftian church to folly and fanaticifm. Fakirs, Bramins, and every other tribe of religious enthusiasts, originated from the fame fource. By abandoning the pleasures of fociety, and renouncing the feelings of nature, they facrificed REASON upon the altar of SUPERSTITION, and fupplied its place with extatic fancies and melancholy mufings. There is nothing more evident, than that our holy religion, in its original conftitution, was fet fo far apart from all refined fpeculations, that it seemed in a manner diametrically oppofite to it. The Great Founder of Chriftianity gave one fimple rule of