and returns of it. I was of the latter class a reluctant, impatient idler; nevertheless, I was so much within the mischief as to feel that the words came home to me. They stung my conscience severely; they were gall and wormwood for me. Nevertheless, I dwelt so long, albeit, perhaps, unwillingly, upon the expression, that I became, as it were, privy to it; I was in a condition to feel and revere its efficacy; I determined to make much of it, to realize it in use, to act it out.

I had heard and read repeatedly that idleness is a very great evil; but the censure did not appear to me to come up to the real truth. I began to think that it was not only a very great evil, but the greatest evil; and not only the greatest one, but in fact the only one- the only mental one, I mean; for, of course, as to morality, a man may be very active, and very viciously active too. But the one great sensible and conceivable evil is that of idleness. No man is wretched in his energy. There can be no pain in a fit; a soldier at the full height of his spirit, and in the heat of contest, is unconscious even of a wound; the orator in the full flow of rhetoric is altogether exempt from the pitifulness of gout and rheumatism. To be occupied, in its first meaning, is to be possessed as by a tenant and see the significancy, the reality, of first meanings. When the occupation is once complete, when the tenancy is full, there can be no entry for any evil spirit: but idleness is emptiness; where it is, there the doors are thrown open, and the evil spirits troop in.

They

The words of the old cobbler were oracular to me. were constantly in my thoughts, like the last voice of his victim in those of the murderer; my mind was pregnant with them; the seed was good, and sown in a good soil — it brought forth the fruit of satisfaction.

It is the odds and ends of our time, its orts and offals laid up, as they usually are, in corners, to decay and perish there, instead of being used out as they should be, these, I say, are the occasions of our moral unsoundness and corruption: a

dead fly, little thing as it is, will spoil a whole box of the most precious ointment; and idleness, if it be once suffered, though but for a brief while, is sure, by the communication of its listless quality, to clog and cumber the clock-work of the whole day. It is the ancient enemy the Old Man of the Arabian Tales. Once take him upon your shoulders, and he is not to be shaken off so easily.

I had a notion of these truths, and I framed my plan after their rules. I resolved that every minute should be occupied by thought, word, or act, or, if none of these, by intention ; vacancy was my only outcast, the scape-goat of my proscription. For this my purpose, I required a certain energy of will, as indeed this same energy is requisite for every other good thing of every sort and kind; without it we are as powerless as grubs, noisome as ditch-water, vague, loose, and unpredestinate as the clouds above our heads. However, I had sufficient of this energy to serve me for that turn; I felt the excellence of the practice, I was penetrated with it through all my being, I clung to it, I cherished it. I made a point of every thing; I was active, brisk, and animated (O, how true is that word!) in all things that I did, even to the picking up of a glove, or asking the time of day. If I ever felt the approach, the first approach, of the insidious languor, I said at once within myself, "In the next quarter of an hour I will do such a thing;" and it was done, and much more than that into the bargain: my mind was set in motion, my spirits stirred and quickened, and raised to their proper height. I watched the cloud, and dissipated it at its first gathering, as well knowing that, if it could grow but to the largeness of a man's hand, it would spread out every where, and darken my whole horizon.

O that this example might be as profitable to others as the practice has been to myself! How rich would be the reward of this book, if its readers would but take it to heart in this one article! if the simple truths that it here speaks could prompt them to take their happiness into their own hands, and learn

the value of industry, not from what they may have heard of it, but because they have themselves tried and felt it! In the first place, its direct and immediate value, inasmuch as it quickens, and cheers, and gladdens every moment that it occupies, and keeps off the evil one by repelling him at the outposts, instead of admitting him to a doubtful, perhaps a deadly, struggle in the citadel; and again its more remote, but no less certain, value, as the mother of many virtues when it has once grown into the temper of the mind, and the nursing mother of many more.

And if we gain so much by its entertainment, how much more must we not lose by its neglect! Our vexations are annoying to us, the disappointments of life are grievous, its calamities deplorable, its indulgences and lusts sinful; but our idleness is worse than all these, and more painful, and more hateful, and in the amount of its consequences, if not in its very essence, more sinful than even sin itself-just as the stock is more fruitful than any branch that springs from it. In fine, do what you will, only do something, and that actively and energetically. Read, converse, sport, think, or study, — the whole range is open to you, only let your mind be full, and then you will want little or nothing to fulfil your happi

ness.

LESSON XCI.

Summer.

BRYANT.

Ir is a sultry day; the sun has drunk
The dew that lay upon the morning grass;
There is no rustling in the lofty elm

That canopies my dwelling, and its shade
Scarce cools me. All is silent, save the faint
And interrupted murmur of the bee,

Settling on the sick flowers, and then again
Instantly on the wing. The plants around
Feel the too potent fervors: the tall maize
Rolls up its long, green leaves; the clover droops
Its tender foliage, and declines its blooms.
But far in the fierce sunshine tower the hills,
With all their growth of woods, silent and stern,
As if the scorching heat and dazzling light
Were but an element they loved. Bright clouds,
Motionless pillars of the brazen heaven,-
Their bases on the mountains, their white tops
Shining in the far ether, - fire the air

With a reflected radiance, and make turn
The gazer's eye away. For me, I lie
Languidly in the shade, where the thick turf,
Yet virgin from the kisses of the sun,
Retains some freshness, and I woo the wind
That still delays its coming. Why so slow,
Gentle and voluble spirit of the air?

O, come and breathe upon the fainting earth
Coolness and life! Is it that in his caves
He hears me? See, on yonder woody ridge,
The pine is bending his proud top, and now,
Among the nearer groves, chestnut and oak
Are tossing their green boughs about. He comes!
Lo, where the grassy meadow runs in waves!
The deep distressful silence of the scene
Breaks up with mingling of unnumbered sounds
And universal motion. He is come,

Shaking a shower of blossoms from the shrubs,
And bearing on their fragrance; and he brings
Music of birds, and rustling of young boughs,
And sound of swaying branches, and the voice
Of distant waterfalls. All the green herbs
Are stirring on his breath: a thousand flowers,

By the road-side and borders of the brook,
Nod gayly to each other: glossy leaves
Are twinkling in the sun, as if the dew
Were on them yet, and silver waters break
Into small waves and sparkle as he comes.

THE frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude which suits
Abstruser musings; save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
”Tis calm, indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange

And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! The thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks its motion, in this hush of nature,
Gives it deep sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,

And makes a toy of Thought.