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colors a good deal washed out, and with salt which has lost its savor. Poor stuff comes off constantly cutting and cropping. The potatoes of the mind grow small: the intellectual wheat comes to have no ears; the moral turnips are infected with the finger and toe disease. The mind is a reservoir which can be emptied in a much shorter time than it is possible to fill it. It fills through an infinity of little tubes, many so small as to act by capillary attraction. But in writing a book, or even an article, it empties as through a twelve-inch pipe. It is to me quite wonderful that most of the sermons one hears are so good as they are, considering the unintermittent stream in which most preachers are compelled to produce them. I have sometimes thought, in listening to the discourse of a really thoughtful and able clergyman, If you, my friend, had to write a sermon once a month instead of once a week, how very admirable it would be!

entirely devoid of the repose, reality, and daylight feeling, of actual life and fact. Yet how many good, injudicious people, are ever ready to expect of the new curate or rector an amount of work which man cannot do ; and to express their disappointment if that work is not done! It is so very easy to map out a task which you are not to do yourself: and you feel so little wearied by the toils of other men! As for you, my young friend, beginning your parochial life, don't be illpleased with the kindly meant advice of one who speaks from the experience of a good many years, and who has himself known all that you feel, and foolishly done all that you are now disposed to do. Consider for how many hours of the day you can labor, without injury to body or mind: labor faithfully for those hours, and for no more. Never mind about what may be said by Miss Limejuice and Mr. Snarling. They will find fault at any rate; and you will mind less about their Some stupid people are afraid of confess- fault-finding, if you have an unimpaired diing that they ever have leisure. They wish gestion, and unaffected lungs, and an unto palm off upon the human race the delusion enlarged heart. Don't pretend that you are that they, the stupid people, are always hard always working: it would be a sin against at work. They are afraid of being thought God and Nature if you were. Say frankly, idle unless they maintain this fiction. I have There is a certain amount of work that I can known clergymen who would not on any ac- do; and that I will do: but I must have my count take any recreation in their own par- hours of leisure. I must have them for the ishes, lest they should be deemed lazy. They sake of my parishioners as well as for my would not fish, they would not ride, they own; for leisure is an essential part of that would not garden, they would never be seen mental discipline which will enable my mind leaning upon a gate, and far less carving to grow and turn off sound instruction for their name upon a tree. What absurd folly! their benefit. Leisure is a necessary part of They might just as well have pretended that true life; and if I am to live at all, I must they did without sleep, or without food, as have it. Surely, it is a thousand times better without leisure. You cannot always drive candidly and manfully to take up that ground, the machine at its full speed. I know, in- than to take recreation on the sly, as though deed, that the machine may be so driven for you were ashamed of being found out in it, two or three years at the beginning of a man's and to disguise your leisure as though it professional life; and that it is possible for a were a sin. I heartily despise the clergyman man to go on for such a period with hardly who reads Adam Bede secretly in his study, any appreciable leisure at all. But it knocks and when any one comes in, pops the volume up the machine: it wears it out: and after into his waste-paper basket. An innocent an attack or two of nervous fever, we learn thing is wrong to you if you think it wrong, what we should have known from the begin- remember. I am sorry for the man who is ning, that a far larger amount of tangible quite ashamed if any one finds him chasing work will be accomplished by regular exer- his little children about the green before his tion of moderate degree and continuance, house, or standing looking at a bank of than by going ahead in the feverish and un-primroses or a bed of violets, or a high wall restful fashion in which really earnest men covered with ivy. Don't give in to that feelare so ready to begin their task. It seems, indeed, to be the rule rather than the exception, that clergymen should break down in strength and spirits in about three years after entering the church. Some die: but happily a larger number get well again, and for the remainder of their days, work at a more reasonable rate. As for the sermons written in that feverish stage of life, what crude and extravagant things they are; stirring and striking, perhaps, but hectic and forced, and

ing for one second. You are doing right in doing all that; and no one but an ignorant, stupid, malicious, little-minded, vulgar, contemptible blockhead will think you are doing wrong. On a sunny day, you are not idle if you sit down and look for an hour at the ivied wåll, or at an apple-tree in blossom, or at the river gliding by. You are not idle if you walk about your garden, noticing the progress and enjoying the beauty and fragrance of each individual rose-tree on such

"

"Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum
Of things forever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?
"Then ask not wherefore, here, alone,
Conversing as I may,

I sit upon this old gray stone,

And dream my time away!""

a charming June day as this. You are not idle if you sit down upon a garden seat, and take your little boy upon your knee, and talk with him about the many little matters which give interest to his little life. You are doing something which may help to establish a bond between you closer than that of blood; and the estranging interests of after years may need it all. And you do not know, Such an opinion is sound and just. Not even as regards the work (if of composition) that I believe that instead of sending a lad at which you are busy, what good ideas and to Eton and Oxford, it would be expedient impulses may come of the quiet time of look- to make him sit down on a gray stone, by ing at the ivy, or the blossoms, or the stream, the side of any lake or river, and wait till or your child's sunny curls. Such things wisdom came to him through the gentle often start thoughts which might seem a teaching of nature. The instruction to be hundred miles away from them. That they thus obtained must be supplementary to a do so, is a fact to which the experience of good education, college and professional, numbers of busy and thoughtful men can obtained in the usual way; and it must be testify. Various thick skulls may think the sought in intervals of leisure, intercalated in statement mystical and incomprehensible: a busy and energetic life. But thus intervenfor the sake of such let me confirm it by high ing, and coming to supplement other trainauthority. Is it not curious, by the way, ing, I believe it will serve ends of the most that in talking to some men and women, if valuable kind, and elicit from the mind the you state a view a little beyond their mark, very best material which is there to be elicyou will find them doubting and disbelieving ited. Some people say they work best unit so long as they regard it as resting upon der pressure: De Quincey, in a recent volyour own authority; but if you can quote ume, declares that the conviction that he any thing that sounds like it from any printed must produce a certain amount of writing in book, or even newspaper, no matter how lit- a limited time has often seemed to open new tle worthy the author of the article or book cells in his brain, rich in excellent thought; may be, you will find the view received with and I have known preachers (very poor ones) respect, if not with credence? The mere declare that their best sermons were written fact of its having been printed, gives any after dinner on Saturday. As for the seropinion whatsoever much weight with some mons, the best were bad; as for De Quincey, folk. And your opinion is esteemed as if of he is a wonderful man. Let us have elbow greater value, if you can only show that any room, say I, when we have to write any human being agreed with you in entertaining thing! Let there be plenty of time, as well it. So, my friend, if Mr. Snarling thinks it as plenty of space. Who could write if a delusion that you may gain some thoughts cramped up in that chamber of torture, called and feelings of value, in the passive contem- Little Ease, in which a man could neither plation of nature, inform him that the fol- sit, stand, nor lie, but in a constrained fashlowing lines were written by one Words-ion? And just as bad is it to be cramped worth, a stamp-distributor in Cumberland, up into three days, when to stretch one's regarded by many competent judges as a self demands at least six. Do you think very wise man :

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"Why, William, on that old gray stone,
Thus for the length of half a day,

Why, William, sit you thus alone,
And dream your time away?'

"One morning thus, by Esthwaite Lake,
When life was sweet, I knew not why,
To me my good friend Matthew spake,
And thus I made reply :-

"The eye,-it cannot choose but see;
We cannot bid the ear be still;
Our bodies feel, where'er they be,
Against or with our will.

"Nor less I deem that there are Powers,

Which of themselves our minds impress:
That we can feel this mind of ours,
In a wise passiveness.

Wordsworth could have written against time? Or that In Memoriam was penned in a hurry?

Said Miss Limejuice, I sa Mr. Swetter, the new rector, to-day. Ah! she added, with a malicious smile, I fear he is growing idle already, though he has not been in the parish six months. I saw him, at a quarter before two precisely, standing at his gate with his hands in his pockets. I observed that he looked for three minutes over the gate into the clover-field he has got. And then Smith drove up in his drag, and stopped and got out; and he and the rector entered into conversation, evidently about the horses, for I saw Mr. Swetter walk round them several times, and rub down their forelegs. Now I think he should have been busy writ

ing his sermon, or visiting his sick. Such, of his duty with the enjoyment of leisure for let me assure the incredulous reader, are the thought; he might be of use in his generawords which I have myself heard Miss Lime- tion without being engaged to that degree juice, and her mother, old Mrs. Snarling that, like some great barristers, he should Limejuice, utter more than once or twice. grow a stranger to his children. He conKnowing the rector well, and knowing how cluded that it is one great happiness of a he portions out his day, let me explain to country parson's life, that he may work hard those candid individuals the state of facts. without working feverishly; he may do his At ten o'clock precisely, having previously duty, yet not bring on an early paralytic gone to the stable and walked round the stroke. Swetter might, if he had liked, have garden, Mr. Swetter sat down at his desk in gone in for the Great Seal; the man who was his study and worked hard till one. At two, second to him will probably get it; but he he is to ride up the parish to see various sick did not choose. Do you not remember how persons among the cottagers. But from one Baron Alderson, who might well have asto two he has laid his work aside, and tried pired at being a chief justice or a lord chanto banish all thought of his work. During cellor, fairly decided that the prize was not that period he has been running about the worth the cost, and was content to turn aside green with his little boy, and even rolling from the worry of the bar into the comparaupon the grass; and he has likewise strung tive leisure of a puisne judgeship? It was together a number of daisies on a thread, not worth his while, he rightly considered, which you might have seen round little to run the risk of working himself to death, Charlie's neck if you had looked sharply. or to live for years in a breathless hurry. He has been unbending his mind, you see, No doubt the man who thus judges must be and enjoying leisure after his work. It is content to see others seize the great prizes entirely true that he did look into the clover- of human affairs. Hot and trembling hands field and enjoy the fragrance of it, which you for the most part, grasp these. And how probably regard as a piece of sinful self-in- many work breathlessly, and give up the dulgence. And his friend coming up, it is tranquil enjoyment of life, yet never grasp likewise certain that he examined his horses them after all! (a new pair) with much interest and minuteness. Let me add, that only contemptible humbugs will think the less of him for all this. The days are past in which the ideal clergyman was an emaciated eremite, who hardly knew a cow from a horse, and was quite incapable of sympathizing with his humbler parishioners in their little country cares. And some little knowledge as to horses and cows, not to mention potatoes and turnips, is a most valuable attainment to the country parson. If his parishioners find that he is entirely ignorant of those matters which they understand best, they will not unnaturally draw the conclusion that he knows nothing. While if they find that he is fairly acquainted with those things which they themselves understand, they will conclude that he knows every thing. Helplessness and ignorance appear contemptible to simple folk, though the helplessness should appear in the lack of power to manage a horse, and the ignorance in a man's not knowing the way in which potatoes are planted. To you, Miss Limejuice, let me further say a word as to your parish clergy

man.

Mr. Swetter, you probably do not know, was Senior Wrangler at Cambridge. He chose his present mode of life, not merely because he felt a special leaning to the sacred profession, though he did feel that strongly; but also because he saw that in the Church, and in the care of a quiet rural parish, he might hope to combine the faithful discharge

There is no period at which the feeling of leisure is a more delightful one, than during breakfast and after breakfast on a beautiful summer morning in the country. It is a slavish and painful thing to know that instantly you rise from the breakfast-table you must take to your work. And in that case your mind will be fretting and worrying away all the time that the hurried meal lasts. But it is delightful to be able to breakfast leisurely; to read over your letters twice; to skim the Times, just to see if there is any thing particular in it (the serious reading of it being deferred till later in the day); and then to go out and saunter about the garden, taking an interest in whatever operations may be going on there; to walk down to the little bridge and sit on the parapet, and look over at the water foaming through below; to give your dogs a swim; to sketch out the rudimentary outline of a kite, to be completed in the evening; to stick up, amid shrieks of excitement and delight, a new colored picture in the nursery; to go out to the stable and look about there;-and to do all this with the sense that there is no neglect, that you can easily overtake your day's work notwithstanding. For this end the country human being should breakfast early; not later than nine o'clock. Breakfast will be over by half-past nine; and the half hour till ten is as much as it is safe to give to leisure, without running the risk of dissipating the mind too much for steady application

to work. After ten one does not feel com- go at his work with a painful, heavy strain ; fortable in idling about, on a common work- and another shall get through his lightly, ing-day. You feel that you ought to be at airily, as if it were pastime. One shall leave your task; and he who would enjoy country off fresh and buoyant; the other, jaded, lanleisure must beware of fretting the fine guid, aching all over. And in this respect, mechanism of his moral perceptions by do- it is probable that if your natural constituing any thing which he thinks even in the tion is not such as to enable you to work least degree wrong. hard, yet leisurely, there is no use in advisAnd here, after thinking of the prelimi- ing you to take things easily. Ah, my poor nary half-hour of leisure before you sit down friend, you cannot! But at least you may to your work, let me advise that when restrict yourself from going at any task on you fairly go at your work, if of composition, end, and keeping yourself ever on the fret you should go at it leisurely. I do not mean until it is fairly finished. Set yourself a fitthat you should work with half a will, with ting task for each day; and on no account a wandering attention, with a mind running exceed it. There are men who have a moraway upon something else. What I mean bid eagerness to get through any work on is, that you should beware of flying at your which they are engaged. They would altask, and keeping at it, with such a stretch, most wish to go right on through all the that every fibre in your body and your mind toils of life and be done with them; and is on the strain, is tense and tightened up; then, like Alexander, " sit down and rest.” so that when you stop, after your two or The prospect of any thing yet to do, appears three hours at it, you feel quite shattered to render the enjoyment of present repose and exhausted. A great many men, espe- impossible. There can be no more unhealthcially those of a nervous and sanguine tem- ful state of mind. The day will never come perament, write at too high a pressure. when we shall have got through our work: They have a hundred and twenty pounds on and well for us that it never will. Why disthe square inch. Every nerve is like the turb the quiet of to-night, by thinking of the string of Robin Hood's bow. All this does toils of to-morrow? There is deep wisdom, no good. It does not appreciably affect the and accurate knowledge of human nature, quality of the article manufactured, nor does in the advice, given by the soundest and it much accelerate the rate of production. kindest of all advisers, and applicable in a But it wears a man out awfully. It sucks hundred cases, to "Take no thought for the him like an orange. It leaves him a dis-morrow." charged Leyden jar, a torpedo entirely used It appears to me, that in these days of up. You have got to walk ten miles. You hurried life, a great and valuable end is do it at the rate of four miles an hour. You served by a class of things which all men of accomplish the distance in two hours and a late have taken to abusing,-to wit, the exhalf; and you come in, not extremely done tensive class of dull, heavy, uninteresting, up. But another day, with the same walk good, sensible, pious sermons. They afford before you, you put on extra steam, and many educated men almost their only interwalk at four and a half miles an hour, per- vals of waking leisure. You are in a cool, haps at five. (Mem.: people who say they quiet, solemn place: the sermon is going walk six miles an hour are talking nonsense. forward: you have a general impression that It cannot be done, unless by a trained pedes- you are listening to many good advices and trian.) You are on a painful stretch all the important doctrines, and the entire result journey: you save, after all, a very few min- upon your mind is beneficial; and at the utes; and you get to your journey's end en- same time there is nothing in the least striktirely knocked up. Like an overdriven ing or startling to destroy the sense of leihorse, you are off your feed; and you can sure, or to painfully arouse the attention and do nothing useful all the evening. I am quicken the pulse. Neither is there a sylwell aware that the good advice contained |lable that can jar on the most fastidious in this paragraph will not have the least taste. All points and corners of thought effect on those who read it. Fungar inani are rounded off. The entire composition is munere. I know how little all this goes for in the highest degree gentlemanly, scholarly, with an individual now not far away. And, correct; but you feel that it is quite imposindeed, no one can say that because two men sible to attend to it. And you do not athave produced the same result in work ac- tend to it; but at the same time, you do not complished, therefore they have gone through quite turn your attention to any thing else. the same amount of exertion. Nor am I Now, you remember how a dying father, now thinking of the vast differences between once upon a time, besought his prodigal son men in point of intellectual power. I am to spend an hour daily in solitary thought: content to suppose that they shall be, intel- and what a beneficial result followed. The lectually, precisely on a level: yet one shall dull sermon may serve an end as desirable.

In church you are alone, in the sense of be- when they went to a church where their ating isolated from all companions, or from tention was kept on the stretch all the time the possibility of holding communication the sermon lasted, whether they would or with anybody and the wearisome sermon, no. They felt that this intrusive interest if utterly useless otherwise, is useful in giv- about the discourse, compelling them to ating a man time to think, in circumstances tend, was of the nature of an assault, and of which will generally dispose him to think an unjustifiable infraction of the liberty of seriously. There is a restful feeling, too, for the subject. Their feeling was, "What which you are the better. It is a fine thing earthly right has that man to make us listen to feel that church is a place where, if even to his sermon, without getting our consent? for two hours only, you are quite free from We go to church to rest: and lo! he comworldly business and cares. You know that pels us to listen!" all these are waiting for you outside; but at I do not forget, musing in the shade this least you are free from their actual endur- beautiful summer day, that there may be ance here. I am persuaded, and I am happy cases in which leisure is very much to be to entertain the persuasion, that men are avoided. To some men, constant occupaoften much the better for being present dur- tion is a thing that stands between them and ing the preaching of sermons to which they utter wretchedness. You remember the poor pay very little attention. Only some such man, whose story is so touchingly told by belief as this could make one think, without Borrow in The Romany Rye, who lost his wife, much sorrow, of the thousands of discourses his children, all his friends, by a rapid sucwhich are preached every Sunday over Bri- cession of strokes; and who declared that tain, and of the class of ears and memories he would have gone mad if he had not resoto which they are given. You see that coun- lutely set himself to the study of the Chinese try congregation coming out of that ivy- language. Only constant labor of mind could covered church in that beautiful churchyard."keep the misery out of his head." And Look at their faces, the ploughman, the years afterwards, if he paused from toil for dairymaids, the drain-diggers, the stable- even a few hours, the misery returned. The boys: what could they do towards taking in poor fisherman in The Antiquary was wrong the gist of that well-reasoned, scholarly, ele- in his philosophy, when Mr. Oldbuck found gant piece of composition which has occupied him, with trembling hands, trying to repair the last half-hour? Why, they could not his battered boat the day after his son was understand a sentence of it. Yet it has done buried. "It's weel wi' you gentles," he them good. The general effect is wholesome. said, "that can sit in the house wi' handkerThey have got a little push, they have felt chers at your een, when ye lose a freend; themselves floating on a gentle current, go- but the like o' us maun to our wark again, ing in the right direction. Only enthusiastic if our hearts were beating as hard as my young divines expect the mass of their con- hammer!" We love the kindly sympathy gregation to do all they exhort them to do. that made Sir Walter write the words: but You must advise a man to do a thing a hun- bitter as may be the effort with which the dred times, probably, before you can get him poor man takes to his heartless task again, to do it once. You know that a breeze, surely, he will all the sooner get over his blowing at thirty-five miles an hour, does sorrow. And it is with gentles, who can very well if it carries a large ship along in "sit in the house" as long as they like, that its own direction at the rate of eight. And the great grief longest lingers. There is a even so, the practice of your hearers, though wonderful efficacy in enforced work to tide truly influenced by what you say to them, one over every sort of trial. I saw not lags tremendously behind the rate of your long since a number of pictures, admirably preaching. Be content, my friend, if you sketched, which had been sent to his family can maintain a movement, sure though slow, in England by an emigrant son in Canada, in the right way. And don't get angry with and which represented scenes in daily life your rural flock on Sundays, if you often see there among the remote settlers. And I on their blank faces, while you are preach- was very much struck with the sad expresing, the evidence that they are not taking in sion which the faces of the emigrants always a word you say. And don't be entirely dis- wore, whenever they were represented in recouraged. You may be doing them good pose or inaction. I felt sure that those penfor all that. And if you do good at all, you sive faces set forth a sorrowful fact. Lying know better than to grumble, though you on a great bluff, looking down upon a lovely may not be doing it in the fashion that you river; or seated at the tent-door on a Sunwould like best. I have known men, accus-day, when his task was laid apart; however tomed to sit quiet, pensive, half attentive, the backwoodsman was depicted, if not in under the sermons of an easy-going but or- energetic action, there was always a very thodox preacher, who felt quite indignant sad look upon the rough face. And it was

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