their subjects, this man is offering up his prayers to God to preserve
all mankind:--While some ministers are sending forth fleets and armies
to wreak their own private vengeance on a brave and uncorrupted people,
this solitary man is feeding, from his own scanty allowance, the birds
of the air.--Conceive him, in his last hour, upon his straw bed, and see
with what composure and resignation he meets it!--Look in the face of
a dying king, or a plundering, and blood-thirsty minister,--what terrors
the sight of their velvet beds, adorned with crimson plumage, must bring
to their affrighted imagination!--In that awful hour, it will remind
them of the innocent blood they have spilt;--nay, they will perhaps
think, they were dyed with the blood of men scalped and massacred, to
support their vanity and ambition!--In short, dear Sir, while kings and
ministers are torn to pieces by a thirst after power and riches, and
disturbed by a thousand anxious cares, this poor hermit can have but
one, _i.e._ lest he should be removed (as the prior of the convent has a
power to do) to some other cell, for that is sometimes done, and very
properly.

The youngest and most hardy constitutions are generally put into the
higher hermitages, or those to which the access is most difficult; for
the air is so fine, in the highest parts of the mountain, that they say
it often renders the respiration painful. Nothing therefore can be more
reasonable than, that as these good men grow older, and less able to
bear the fatigues and inconveniencies the highest abodes unavoidably
subject them to, should be removed to more convenient dwellings, and
that the younger and stouter men should succeed them.

As the hermits never eat meat, I could not help observing to him, how
fortunate a circumstance it was for the safety of his little feathered
friends; and that there were no boys to disturb their young, nor any