Solitude considered with respect to its influence upon the mind and the heart : written originally in German / by M. Zimmermann ... translated from the French of J.B. Mercier.

Johann Georg von Zimmermann

Date:: 1794

Credit: Solitude considered with respect to its influence upon the mind and the heart : written originally in German / by M. Zimmermann ... translated from the French of J.B. Mercier. Source: Wellcome Collection.

119/444 page 101

$pernicious polfon which flows from idle pomp, inconflderate profufion, and abandoned plea- fures: but no fooner had he converfed with the divine Plato, and acquired a tafte for that refined philofophy which leads lo a life of vir- tue, than his whole foul became deeply ena- moured of its charms. The infpiratlon which Dion caught from reading tne works of Plato, every mother may filently and unperreived, pour into the mind of her child, Philofophy, from the lips of a wife and fenfible mother, penetrates into the \ mind through the feelings of the heart. Who is not fond of walking even through the rough- ed: and moft difficult path, when conducted by the hand they love ? What fpecies of rnftru<5lion can excel the fweet lefTons which proceed from a femaje mind endowed with a found under- flanding, an elevated f];yle of thinking, and whofe heart feels all the affedtion that her pre- cepts infpire ? Oh ma/ every mother fo cn- - dowed be blefTed with a child who fondly re- tires with her to her clofet, and liftens with de- light to her inftrudtions ; who, with a book in his pocket, loves to climb among the rocks alone j who, when engaged in rural fp.ort, throws himlclf at the foot of fome veueraole tree, and feeks rather to trace out great and il-$