COMPANY, in a familiar or fashionable sense, is used for an assemblage of persons met for the purpose of conversation, pastime, or festivity.
The love of company and of social pleasures is natural, and attended with some of the sweetest satisfactions of human life; but, like every other love, when it proceeds beyond the bounds of moderation, it ceases to produce its natural effect, and terminates in disgustful satiety. The foundation-stone and the pillar on which we build the fabric of our felicity, must be laid in our own hearts. Amusement, mirth, agreeable variety, and even improvement, may be sometimes sought in the gaiety of mixed company, and in the usual diversions of the world; but if we found our general happiness on these, we shall do little more than raise castles in the air, or build houses on the sand.
To derive the proper pleasure and improvement from company, it ought to be select, and to consist of persons of character, respectable both for their morals and their understandings. Mixed and undistinguished society tends only to dissipate our ideas, and induce a laxity of principles and practice. The pleasure it affords is of a coarse, mixed, noisy, and rude kind. Indeed, it commonly ends in weariness and disgust, as even they are ready to confess who yet constantly pursue it, as if their chief good consisted in living in a crowd.
Among these, indeed, who are exempted by their circumstances from professional and official employ-
ments, and who professedly devote themselves to a life of pleasure, little else seems to constitute the idea of it, but an unceasing succession of company, public or private. The dress, and other circumstances preparatory to the enjoyment of this pleasure, scarcely leave a moment for reflection. Day after day is spent in the same toilsome round, till a habit is formed, which renders dissipation necessary to existence. One week without it would probably induce a lowness of spirits, which might terminate in despair and suicide. When the mind has no anchor, it will suffer a kind of shipwreck; it will sink in whirlpools, and be dashed on rocks. What, indeed, is life or its enjoyments without settled principles, laudable purposes, mental exertions, and internal comfort? It is merely a vapour, or, to drop the language of figure on so serious a subject, it is a state worse than non-entity, since it possesses a restless power of action, productive of nothing but misery.
It is recommended, therefore, to all who wish to enjoy their existence (and who entertains not that wish?) that they should acquire a power not only of bearing, but of taking a pleasure in, temporary solitude. Every one must, indeed, sometimes be alone. Let him not repine when he is alone, but learn to set a value on the golden moments. It is then that he is enabled to study himself and the world around him. It is then that he has an opportunity of seeing things as they are, and of removing the deceitful veil, which almost every thing assumes in the busy scene of worldly employments. The soul is enabled to retire into herself, and to exert those energies which are always attended with sublime pleasure. She is enabled to see the dependent, frail, and wretched state of man as the child of nature; and incited by her discovery, to implore grace and protection from the Lord of the universe. They, indeed, who fly from solitude, can seldom be religious; for religion requires meditation. They may be said to "live without God in the world;" not, it is true, from atheistical principles, but from a carelessness of disposition; a truly deplorable state, the consciousness of which could not fail to cloud the gaiety of those haleyon beings who sport in the sunshine of unremitted pleasure.
There is no doubt that man is made for action, and that his duties and pleasures are often most numerous and most important amidst the busy hum of men. Many vices, and many corrupt dispositions, have been fostered in a solitary life. Monkery is not favourable to human nature or human happiness; but neither is unlimited dissipation.
In short, let there be a sweet interchange of retirement and association, of repose and activity. A few hours spent every day by the votaries of pleasure in serious meditation, would render their pleasure pure, and more unmixed with misery. It would give them knowledge, so that they would see how far they might advance in their pursuit without danger; and resolution, so that they might retreat when danger approached. It would teach them how to live, a knowledge which indeed they think they possess already; and it would also teach them, what they are often too little solicitous to learn, how to die.