Some folk's life is like an oak walking-stick, therefore more likely to be a true one, straight and varnished; useful, but hard and uncolored by any temporary mental state. bare. Other men's life (and such may yours Write down briefly what you have been doand mine, kindly reader, ever be) is like ing. Never mind that the events are very that oak when it was not a stick but a little. Of course, they must be; but you rebranch, and waved, leaf-enveloped, and with member what Pope said of little things. lots of little twigs growing out of it, upon the State what work you did. Record the progsummer tree. And yet more precious than ress of matters in the garden. Mention the power of the diary to call up again a host where you took your walk, or ride, or drive. of little circumstances and facts, is its power State any thing particular concerning the to bring back the indescribable but keenly horses, cows, dogs, and pigs. Preserve some felt atmosphere of those departed days. The memorial of the progress of the children. old time comes over you. It is not merely a Relate the occasions on which you made a collection, an aggregate of facts, that comes kite or a water-wheel for any of them; also back; it is something far more excellent than the stories you told them, and the hymns you that it is the soul of days long ago; it is heard them repeat. You may preserve some the dear Auld lang syne itself! The per- mention of their more remarkable and oldfume of hawthorn-hedges faded is there; the fashioned sayings. Forsitan et olim hæc breath of breezes that fanned our gray hair meminisse juvabit: all these things may bring when it made sunny curls, often smoothed back more plainly a little life when it has down by hands that are gone; the sunshine ceased; and set before you a rosy face and a on the grass where these old fingers made curly little head when they have mouldered daisy-chains; and snatches of music, com- into clay. Or if you go, as you would rather pared with which any thing you hear at the have it, before them, why, when one of your opera is extremely poor. Therefore keep boys is Archbishop of Canterbury and the your diary, my friend. Begin at ten years other Lord Chancellor, they may turn over old, if you have not yet attained that age. the faded leaves, and be the better for readIt will be a curious link between the altered ing those early records, and not impossibly seasons of your life; there will be something think some kindly thoughts of their governor very touching about even the changes which who is far away. Record when the first will pass upon your handwriting. You will snowdrop came, and the earliest primrose. look back at it occasionally, and shed sev- Of course, you will mention the books you eral tears of which you have not the least read, and those (if any) which you write. reason to be ashamed. No doubt when you Preserve some memorial, in short, of every look back, you will find many very silly thing that interests you and yours; and look things in it; well, you did not think them back each day, after you have written the silly at the time; and possibly you may be few lines of your little chronicle, to see what humbler, wiser, and more sympathetic, for you were about that day the preceding year. the fact that your diary will convince you (if No one who in this simple spirit keeps a you are a sensible person now) that proba- diary, can possibly be a bad, unfeeling, or bly you yourself, a few years or a great cruel man. No scapegrace or blackguard many years since, were the greatest fool you could keep a diary such as that which has ever knew. Possibly at some future time been described. I am not forgetting that you may look back with similar feelings on various blackguards, and extremely dirty your present self; so you will see that it is ones, have kept diaries, but they have been very fit that meanwhile you should avoid self- diaries to match their own character. Even confidence and cultivate humility; that you in reading Byron's diary, you can see that should not be bumptious in any way; and he was not so much a very bad fellow, as a that you should bear, with great patience very silly fellow, who thought it a grand and kindliness, the follies of the young. thing to be esteemed very bad. When, by Therefore, my reader, write up your diary the way, will the day come when young men daily. You may do so at either of two will cease to regard it as the perfection of times: 1st. After breakfast, whenever you youthful humanity to be a reckless, swaggersit down to your work, and before you begining fellow, who never knows how much your work; 2nd. After you have done your money he has or spends, who darkly hints indoors work, which ought not to be later than two p.m., and before you go out to your external duties. Some good men, as Dr. Arnold, have in addition to this brought up their history to the present period before retiring for the night. This is a good plan; it preserves the record of the day as it appears to us in two different moods: the record is

that he has done many wicked things which he never did, who makes it a boast that he never reads any thing, and thus who affects to be a more ignorant numskull than he actually is? When will young men cease to be ashamed of doing right, and to boast of doing wrong (which they never did)? "Thank God," said poor Milksop to me the

other day," although I have done a great even no skeleton at all. There is many a many bad things, I never did, etc., etc., etc." The silly fellow fancied that I should think a vast deal of one who had gone through so much, and sown such a large crop of wild oats. I looked at him with much pity. Ah! thought I to myself, there are fellows who actually do the things you absurdly pretend to have done; but if you had been one of those, I should not have shaken hands with you five minutes since. With great difficulty did I refrain from patting his empty head, and saying, "O poor Milksop, you are a tremendous fool!"

house, and many a family, in which there is a skeleton, which is made the distressing nightmare it is, mainly by trying to ignore it. There is some fretting disagreement, some painful estrangement, made a thousand times worse by ill-judged endeavors to go on just as if it were not there. If you wish to get rid of it, you must recognize its existence, and treat it with frankness, and seek manfully to set it right. It is wonderful how few evils are remediless, if you fairly face them, and honestly try to remove them. Therefore, I say it earnestly, don't lock your

there, I defy you to forget that it is. And even if it could bring you present quiet, it is no healthful draught, the water of Lethe. Drugged rest is unrefreshful, and has painful dreams.

It is indeed to be admitted that by keep-skeleton-chamber door. If the skeleton be ing a diary you are providing what is quite sure in days to come to be an occasional cause of sadness. Probably it will never conduce to cheerfulness to look back over those leaves. Well, you will be much the And further: don't let your better for being sad occasionally. There are diary turn to a small skeleton, as it is sure other things in this life than to put things in to do if it has fallen much into arrear. There a ludicrous light, and laugh at them. That, will be a peculiar soreness in thinking that too, is excellent in its time and place: but it is in arrear; yet you will shrink painfully even Douglas Jerrold sickened of the forced from the idea of taking to it again and bringfun of Punch, and thought this world had ing it up. Better to begin a fresh volume. better ends than jesting. Don't let your There is one thing to be especially avoided. diary fall behind: write it up day by day: Do not, on any account, upon some evening or you will shrink from going back to it and when you are pensive, down-hearted, and continuing it, as Sir Walter Scott tells us alone, go to the old volumes, and turn over he did. You will feel a double unhappiness the yellow pages with their faded ink. Never in thinking you are neglecting something recur to volumes telling the story of years you ought to do, and in knowing that to re- long ago, except at very cheerful times in pair your omission demands an exertion at- very hopeful moods: unless, indeed, you tended with especial pain and sorrow. Avoid desire to feel, as did Sir Walter, the connecat all events that discomfort of diary-keep-tion between the clauses of the scriptural ing, by scrupulous regularity: there are statement, that Ahithophel set his house in others which you cannot avoid, if you keep order and hanged himself. In that setting a diary at all, and occasionally look back in order, what old, buried associations rise upon it. It must tend to make thoughtful people sad, to be reminded of things concerning which we feel that we cannot think of them; that they have gone wrong, and cannot now be set right; that the evil is irremediable, and must just remain, and fret and worry whenever thought of; and life go on under that condition. It is like making up one's mind to live on under some incurable disease, not to be alleviated, not to be remedied, only if possible to be forgotten. Ordinary people have all some of these things: tangles in their life and affairs that cannot be unravelled and must be left alone: sorrowful things which they think cannot be helped. I think it highly inexpedient to give way to such a feeling; it ought to be resisted as far as it possibly can. The very worst thing that you can do with a skeleton is to lock the closet door upon it, and try to think no more of it. No: open the door: let in air and light: bring the skeleton out, and sort it manfully up: perhaps it may prove to be only the skeleton of a cat, or

up again: what sudden pangs shoot through the heart, what a weight comes down upon it, as we open drawers long locked, and come upon the relics of our early selves, and schemes and hopes! Well, your old diary, of even five or ten years since (especially if you have as yet hardly reached middle age), is like a repertory in which the essence of all sad things is preserved. Bad as is the drawer or the shelf which holds the letters sent you from home when you were a schoolboy; sharp as is the sight of that lock of hair of your brother, whose grave is baked by the suns of Hindostan; riling (not to say more) as is the view of that faded ribbon or those withered flowers which you still keep, though Jessie has long since married Mr. Beest, who has ten thousand a-year: they are not so bad, so sharp, so riling, as is the old diary, wherein the spirit of many disappointments, toils, partings, and cares, is distilled and preserved. So don't look too frequently into your old diaries, or they will make you glum. Don't let them be your

usual reading. It is a poor use of the past, to let its remembrances unfit you for the duties of the present.

which are certainly meant to be observed, and worth observing. I don't mean to say that a beautiful thing in nature is lost beI have been in a hurry, I have said; but cause no human being sees it; I have not I am not so now. Probably the intelligent so vain an idea of the importance of our reader of the preceding pages may surmise race. I do not think that that blue sky, as much. I am enjoying three days of de- with its beautiful fleecy clouds, was spread lightful leisure. I did nothing yesterday: I out there just as a scene at a theatre is am doing nothing to-day: I shall do nothing spread out, simply to be looked at by us; to-morrow. This is June: let me feel that and that the intention of its Maker is baulked it is so. When in a hurry, you do not real- if it be not. Still, among a host of other ize that a month, more especially a summer uses, which we do not know, it cannot be , month, has come, till it is gone. June: let questioned that one end of the scenes of nait be repeated: the leafy month of June, to ture, and of the capacity of noting and enuse the strong expression of Mr. Coleridge. joying them which is implanted in our being, Let me hear you immediately quote the is, that they should be noted and enjoyed verse, my young lady reader, in which that by human minds and hearts. It is now halfexpression is to be found. Of course you past eleven A.M., and I have nothing to do can repeat it. It is now very warm, and that need take me far from this spot till dinbeautifully bright. I am sitting on a vel-ner, which will be just seven hours hereafter. vety lawn, a hundred yards from the door It requires an uninterrupted view of at least of a considerable country house, not my personal property. Under the shadow of a large sycamore is this iron chair; and this little table, on which the paper looks quite green from the reflection of the leaves. There is a very little breeze. Just a foot from my hand, a twig with very large leaves is moving slowly and gently to and fro. There, the great serrated leaf has brushed the pen. The sunshine is sleeping (the word is not an affected one, but simply expresses the phenomenon) upon the bright green grass, and upon the dense masses of foliage which are a little way off on every side. Away on the left, there is a well-grown horse-chestnut tree, blazing with blossoms. Why, by the way, does Mr. Albert Smith mention that when a lot of little Chineses had a passage of English dictated to them, they all wrote it out with perfect accuracy except one of them, who spelt chestnut wrong by introducing the central t? Does not Mr. Smith know that such is the right way to spell the word, and that chesnut without the t is wrong? In the little recesses where the turf makes bays of verdure going into the thicket, the grass is nearly as white with daisies as if it were covered with snow, or had several tablecloths spread out upon it to dry. Blue and green, I am given to understand, form an incongruous combination in female dress; but how beautiful the little patches of sapphire sky, seen through the green leaves!

Keats was quite right; any one who is really fond of nature must be very far gone indeed, when he or she, like poor Isabella with her pot of basil, "forgets the blue above the trees." I am specially noticing a whole host of little appearances and relations among the natural objects within view, which no man in a hurry would ever observe; yet

four or five hours ahead, to give the true sense of leisure. If you know you have some particular engagement in two hours, or even three or four, the feeling you have is not that of leisure. On the contrary, you feel that you must push on vigorously with whatever you may be about; there is no time to sit down and muse. Two hours are a very short time. It is to be admitted that much less than half of that period is very long, when you are listening to a sermon; and the man who wishes his life to appear as long as possible can never more effectually compass his end than by going very frequently to hear preachers of that numerous class whose discourses are always sensible and in good taste, and also sickeningly dull and tiresome. Half an hour under the instruction of such good men has oftentimes appeared like about four hours. But for quiet folk, living in the country, and who have never held the office of attorney-general or secretary of state, two hours form quite too short a vista to permit of sitting down to begin any serious work, such as writing a sermon or an article. Two hours will not afford elbow-room. One is cramped in it. Give me a clear prospect of five or six; so shall I begin an essay for Fraser. It is quite evident that Hazlitt was a man of the town, accustomed to live in a hurry, and to fancy short blinks of unoccupation to be leisure,-even as a man long dwelling in American woods might think a little open glade quite an extensive clearing. He begins his essay on Living to One's Self, by saying that being in the country he has a fine opportunity of writing on that long-contemplated subject, and of writing at leisure, because he has three hours good before him, not to mention a partridge getting ready for his supper. Ah, not enough! Very well

for the fast-going high-pressure London because I know nothing about it, and care mind; but quite insufficient for the deliber- nothing about it, and have nothing to say ate, slow running, country one, that has to about it; and so am glad to get over a page overcome a great inertia. How many good or two of my production without bona fide ideas, or at least ideas which he thinks good, going at my subject. Such a consideration, will occur to the rustic writer; and be cast no doubt, is not without its weight; and be aside when he reflects that he has but two sides this holding that every way of discusshours to sit at his task, and that, therefore, ing all things whatsoever is good except the he has not a moment to spare for collateral tiresome, I think that even Smith's Drag matters, but must keep to the even thread serves a useful end if it pulls one a little way of his story or his argument! A man who through a heavy discussion; as the short inhas four miles to walk within an hour, has clined plane set Mr. Hensom's aerial malittle time to stop and look at the view on chine off with a good start, without which it either hand; and no time at all for scram- could not fly. But there is more than this bling over the hedge to gather some wild in the case. The writer holds by a grand flowers. But now I rejoice in the feeling of principle. The writer's great reason for sayan unlimited horizon before me, in the re- ing something of the scenery amidst which gard of time. Various new books are lying he is writing, is, that he believes that it maon the grass; and on the top of the heap, a terially affects the thought produced, and certain number of that trenchant and bril- ought to be taken in connection with it. liant periodical, the Saturday Review. This You would not give a just idea of a country is delightful! It is jolly! And let us al- house by giving us an architect's elevation ways be glad, if through training or idiosyn- of its façade, and showing nothing of the crasy we have come to this, my reader, that hills by which it is backed, and the trees whenever you and I enjoy this tranquil feel- and shrubbery by which it is surrounded. ing of content, there mingles with it a deep So, too, with thought. We think in time and sense of gratitude. I should be very sorry space; and unless you are a very great man, to-day, if I did not know whom to thank for writing a book like Butler's Analogy, the all this. like the simple, natural piety, outward scenes amid which you write will which has given to various seats, at the top color all your abstract thought. Most peoof various steep hills in Scotland, the homely ple hate abstract thought. Give it in a setname of Rest and be thankful! I trust I ting of scene and circumstances, and, then, am now doing both these things. O ye ordinary folk will accept it. Set a number men who have never been overworked and of essays in a story, however slight; and overdriven, never kept for weeks on a con- hundreds will read them who would never stant strain and in a feverish hurry, you have looked twice at the bare essays. Hudon't know what you miss! Sweet and de- man interest and a sense of reality are thus licious as cool water is to the man parched communicated. When any one says to me, with thirst, is leisure to the man just extri- "I think thus and thus of some abstract cated from breathless hurry! And nauseous topic," I like to say to him, "Tell me where as is that same water to the man whose thirst you thought it, how you thought it, what has been completely quenched, is leisure to you were looking at when you thought it, the man whose life is nothing but leisure. and to whom you talked about it." I deny that in essays what is wanted is results. Give me processes. Show me how the results are arrived at. In some cases, doubtless, this is inexpedient. You would not enjoy your dinner if you inquired too minutely into the previous history of its component elements, before it appeared upon your table. You might not care for one of Goldsmith's or Sheridan's pleasantries, if you traced too curiously the steps by which it was licked into shape. Not so with the essay. And by exhibiting the making of his essay, as well as the essay itself when made, the essayist is enabled to preserve and exhibit many thoughts, which he could turn to no account did he exhibit only his conclusions. It is a grand idea to represent two or three friends as discussing a subject. For who that has ever written upon abstract subjects, or conversed upon them, but knows

Let me pick up that number of the Saturday Review, and turn to the article which is entitled Smith's Drag." That article treats of a certain essay which the present writer contributed to the June number of this Magazine; and sets out the desultory fashion in which that essay wanders about. I have read the article with great amusement and pleasure. In the main it is perfectly just. Does not the avowal say something for the writer's good-humor? Not unfrequently does the reviewed acknowledge that he was quite rightly pitched into. Let me, however, say to the very clever and smart author of Smith's Drag, that he is to some extent mistaken in his theory as to my system of essay-writing. It is not entirely true that I begin my essays with irrelevant descriptions of scenery, horses, and the like, merely

*June 4th, 1859, pp. 677-8.

that very often what seems capital ideas oc- are done at all; and the condition thus incur to him, which he has not had time to duced is hurry. I am aware, of course, that write down or to utter before he sees an an- there is a distinction between haste and swer to them, before he discovers that they hurry-hurry adding to rapidity the element are unsound. Now to the essayist writing of painful confusion; but in the case of orstraightforward these thoughts are lost; he dinary people, haste generally implies hurry. cannot exhibit them. It will not do to write And it will never do to become involved in them, and then add that now he sees they a mode of life which implies a constant are wrong. Here, then, is the great use breathless pushing on. It must be a horrione great use of the Ellesmere and the ble thing to go through life in a hurry. It Dunsford, who shall hold friendly council is highly expedient for all, it is absolutely with the essayist. They, understood to be necessary for most men, that they should talking off-hand, can state all these interest- have occasional leisure. Many enjoyments ing and striking, though unsound, views ;—perhaps all the tranquil and enduring enand then the more deliberate Milverton can joyments of life-cannot be felt except in show that they are wrong. And the three leisure. And the best products of the hufriends combined do but represent the phases man mind and heart can be brought forth of thought and feeling in a single individual: only in leisure. Little does he know of the for who does not know that every reflective calm, unexciting, unwearying, lasting satisman is, at the very fewest, "three gentle- faction of life, who has never known what it men at once"? Let me say for myself, that is to place the leisurely hand in the idle it seems to me that no small part of the in- pocket, and to saunter to and fro. Mind, I expressible charm which there is about the utterly despise the idler-the loafer, as YanFriends in Council and the Companions of kecs term him, who never does any thing My Solitude, arises from the use of the two-whose idle hands are always in his idle expedients; of exhibiting processes as well pockets, and who is always sauntering to as results, of showing how views are formed as well as the views themselves; and also of setting the whole abstract part of the work in a framework of scenes and circumstances. All this makes one feel a lifelike reality in the entire picture presented, and enables one to open the leaves with a homelike and friendly sympathy. Do not fancy, my brilliant reviewer, that I pretend to write like that thoughtful and graceful author, so rich in wisdom, in wit, in pathos, in kindly feeling. All I say is that I have learned from him the grand principle, that abstract thought, for ordinary readers, must gain reality and interest from a setting of time and place.

There is the green branch of the tree, waving about. The breeze is a little stronger, but still the air is perfectly warm. Let me be leisurely; I feel a little hurried with writing that last paragraph; I wrote it too quickly. To write a paragraph too quickly, putting in too much pressure of steam, will materially accelerate the pulse. That is an end greatly to be avoided. Who shall write hastily of leisure! Fancy Izaak Walton going out fishing, and constantly looking at his watch every five minutes, for fear of not catching the express train in half an hour! It would be indeed a grievous inconsistency. The old gentleman might better have stayed at home.

It is all very well to be occasionally, for two or three days, or even for a fortnight, in a hurry. Every earnest man, with work to do, will find that occasionally there comes a pressure of it; there comes a crowd of things which must be done quickly if they

and fro. Leisure, be it remembered, is the intermission of labor; it is the blink of idleness in the life of a hard-working man. It is only in the case of such a man that leisure is dignified, commendable, or enjoyable. But to him it is all these, and more. Let us not be ever driving on. The machinery, physical and mental, will not stand it. It is fit that one should occasionally sit down on a grassy bank, and look listlessly, for a long time, at the daisies around, and watch the patches of bright blue sky through green leaves overhead. It is right to rest on a large stone by the margin of a river; to rest there on a summer day for a long time, and to watch the lapse of the water as it passes away, and to listen to its silvery ripple over the pebbles. Who but a blockhead will think you idle? Of course, blockheads may; but you and I, my reader, do not care a rush for the opinion of blockheads. It is fit that a man should have time to chase his little children about the green, to make a kite and occasionally fly it, to rig a ship and occasionally sail it, for the happiness of those little folk. There is nothing unbecoming in making your Newfoundland dog go into the water to bring out sticks, nor in teaching a lesser dog to stand on his hinder legs. No doubt Goldsmith was combining leisure with work when Reynolds one day visited him; but it was leisure that aided the work. The painter entered the poet's room unnoticed. The poet was seated at his desk, with his pen in his hand, and with his paper before him: but he had turned away from The Traveller, and with uplifted hand was look