All the instruments of pleasure, on which his reason or imagination set any value, were within his reach.

But these he must forego, for the sake of advantages which, whatever were their value, were as yet uncertain.

In pursuit of an imaginary addition to his wealth, he must reduce himself to poverty, he must exchange present certainties for what was distant and contingent; for who knows not that the law is a system of expence, delay and uncertainty?
If he should embrace this scheme, it would lay him under the necessity of making a voyage to Europe, and remaining for a certain period, separate from his family.

He must undergo the perils and discomforts of the ocean; he must divest himself of all domestic pleasures; he must deprive his wife of her companion, and his children of a father and instructor, and all for what?
For the ambiguous advantages which overgrown wealth and flagitious tyranny have to bestow?
For a precarious possession in a land of turbulence and war?
Advantages, which will not certainly be gained, and of which the acquisition, if it were sure, is necessarily distant.
Pleyel was enamoured of his scheme on account of its intrinsic benefits, but, likewise, for other reasons.

His abode at Leipsig made that country appear to him like home.