thing it must be for a toil-worn_barrister | those long fingers, how unmuscular those to throw briefs and cases and reports arms. What he needs in addition to the aside, and quitting the pestilential air of autumn holiday, is some bona fide play Westminster Hall, laden with odors from every day of his life. What is his amusethe Thames, which are not the least like ment when in town? Why, mainly it those of Araby the Blest, to set off to consists of going into society, where he the Highlands for a few weeks among the gains nothing of elasticity and vigor, but moors. No school-boy at holiday-time is merely injures his digestive organs. Why lighter-hearted than he, as he settles down does he not rather have half an hour's into his corner in that fearfully fast ex- lively bodily exercise, rowing, or quoits, press-train on the Great Northern Rail or tennis, or skating, or any thing he may way. And when he reaches his box in have taste for? And if it be foolish to the North at last, what a fresh and happy take all the year's play at once, as so sensation it must be to get up in the many intellectual workers think to do, morning in that pure, unbreathed air, with much more foolish is it to keep all the the feeling that he has nothing to do, play of life till the work is over: to toil nothing, at any rate, except what he and moil at business through all the better chooses; and after the deliberately-eaten years of our time in this world, in the breakfast, to saunter forth with the de- hope that at length we shall be able to lightful sense of leisure, to think that retire from business, and make the evening he has time to breathe and think after the of life all holiday, all play. In all likeliceaseless hurry of the past months, and hood the man who takes this course will to think that nothing will go wrong al- never retire at all, except into an untimethough he should sit down on the mossy ly grave; and if he should live to reach parapet of the little one-arched bridge the long-coveted retreat, he will find that that spans the brawling mountain-stream, all play and no work makes life quite as and there rest, and muse, and dream just wearisome and as little enjoyable as all as long as he likes. Two or three such work and no play. Ennui will make him men come to this neighborhood yearly; miserable; and body and mind, deprived and I enjoy the sight of them, they look of their wonted occupation, will soon so happy. Every little thing, if they in- break down. After very hard and longdeed be genial, true, unstiffened men, is a continued work, there is indeed a pleasure source of interest to them. The total in merely sitting still and doing nothing. change makes them grow rapturous about But after the feeling of pure exhausation matters which we, who are quite accus- is gone, that will not suffice. A boy entomed to them, take more coolly. I think, joys play, but he is miserable in enforced when I look at them, of the truthful lines idleness. In writing about retiring from of Gray: the task-work of life, one naturally thinks of that letter to Wordsworth, in which Charles Lamb told what he felt when he was finally emancipated from his drudgery in the India House: "See the wretch, that long has tost, On the thorny bed of pain, At length repair his vigor lost, Equidiem invideo, a little. I feel some- But, much as that great Queen's Counsel enjoys his long vacation's play, you see it is not enough. Look how thin his hair is, how pale his cheeks are, how fleshless "I came home FOREVER on Tuesday week. The incomprehensibleness of my condition overwhelmed me. It was like passing from life into eternity. Every year to be as long as three; that is, to have three times as much real time-time that is my own-in it! I wandered about thinking I was happy, and feeling I was not. But that tumultuousness is passing off, and I begin to understand the nature of the gift. Holidays, even the annual month, were always uneasy joys, with their conscious fugitiveness, the craving after making the most of them. Now, when all is holiday, there are no holidays. I can sit at home, in rain or shine, without a restless impulse for walkings." There are unhappy beings in the world, who secretly stand in fear of all play, on the hateful and wicked notion, which I believe some men regard as being of the essence of Christianity, though in truth it is its contradiction, that every thing pleasant is sinful, that God dislikes to see Îis creatures cheerful and happy. I think it is the author of Friends in Council who says something to the effect, that many people, infected with that Puritan falsehood, slink about creation, afraid to confess that they ever are enjoying them selves. It is a sad thing when such a belief is entertained by even grown-up men; but it stirs me to absolute fury when I know of it being impressed upon poor little children, to repress their natural gayety of heart. Did you ever, my reader, read that dreary and preposterous book in which Thomas Clarkson sought to show that Quakerism is not inconsistent with common-sense? Probably not; but perhaps you may have met with Jef frey's review of it. Nothing short of a vehement kicking could relieve my feel ings if I heard some sly, money-making old rascal, impressing upon some merry children that "stillness and quietness both of spirit and body are necessary, as far as they can be obtained. Hence, Quaker children are rebuked for all expressions of anger, as tending to raise those feelings which ought to be suppressed; a raising even of the voice beyond due bounds, i discouraged as leading to the disturbance of their minds. They are taught to rise in the morning in quietness; to go about their ordinary occupations with quietness; and with quietness to retire to their beds." Can you think of more complete flying in the face of the purposes of the kind Creator? Is it not his manifest intention that childhood should be the time of merry laughter, of gayety, and shouts, and noise? There is not a sadder sight than that of a little child prematurely subdued and "quiet." Let me know of any drab-coated humbug impressing such ideas on any child of mine; and though from circumstances I can not personally see him put under the pump, I know certain quarters in which it is only needful to drop a very faint hint, in order to have him first pumped upon, and then tarred and feathered. But there is another class of mortals, who are free from the Puritan principle, and who have no objection to amusement for themselves, but who seem to have no notion that their inferiors and their serv ants ought ever to do any thing but work. The reader will remember the fashionable governess in The Old Curiosity Shop, who insisted that only genteel children should ever be permitted to play. The well-known lines of Dr. Isaac Watts, "In books, or work, or healthful play, Let my first years be past," were applicable, she maintained, only to the children of families of the wealthier sort; while for poor children there must be a new reading, which she improvised as follows: "In work, work, work. In work alway, Some good account at last." And as for domestic servants, poor creatures, I fear there is many a house in which there is no provision whatever made for play for them. There can be no drearier round of life than that to which their employers destine them. From the moment they rise, hours before any member of the family, to the moment when they return to bed, it is one constant push of sordid labor-often in chambers to which air and light and cheerfulness can never come. And if they ask a rare holiday, what a fuss is made about it! Now, what is the result of all this? Some poor solitary beings do actually sink into the spiritless drudges which such a life tends to make them: but the greater number feel that they can not live with all work and no play; and as they can not get play openly, they get it secretly they go out at night when you, their mistress, are asleep; or they bring in their friends at those unreasonable hours: they get that amusement and recreation on the sly, and with the sense that they are doing wrong and deceiving, which they ought to be permitted to have openly and honestly: and thus you break down their moral principle, you train them to cheat you, you educate them into liars and thieves. servants thus regard you as their natural enemy: it is fair to take any advantage you can of a jailer: you are their taskimposer, their driver, their jailer - any thing but their friend; and if they can take advantage of you in any way, they will. And serve you right. Of course your I have known injudicious clergymen who did all they could to discourage the see it put white upon black and how plain it is. Light your lamp in the sunshine, and it is nothing: you must have darkness round it to make its presence felt. And besides this, a great part of the enjoyment of recreation consists in the feeling that we have earned it by previous hard work. One goes out for the afternoon walk with a light heart when one has done a good task since breakfast. It is one thing for a dawdling idler to set off to the Continent or to the Highlands, just because he is sick of every thing around him; and quite another thing when a hard-wrought man, who is of some use in life, sets off, as gay as a lark, with the pleasant feeling that he has brought some worthy work to an end, on the selfsame tour. And then a busy man finds a relish in simple recreations; while a man who has nothing to do, finds all things wearisome, and thinks that life is "usedup" it takes something quite out of the way to tickle that indurated palate: you might as well think to prick the hide of a hippopotamus with a needle, as to excite the interest of that blasé being by any amusement which is not highly spiced with the cayenne of vice. And that, certainly, has a powerful effect. It was a glass of water the wicked old Frenchwoman was drinking when she said: "Oh! that this were a sin, to give it a relish!" games and sports of their parishioners. | Put white upon white, and you can hardly They could not prevent them; but one thing they did they made them disreputable. They made sure that the poor man who ran in a sack, or climbed a greased pole, felt that thereby he was forfeiting his character, perhaps imperil ing his salvation: and so he thought that having gone so far, he might go the full length: and thus he got drunk, got into a fight, thrashed his wife, smashed his crockery, and went to the lock-up. How much better it would have been had the clergyman sought to regulate these amusements; and since they would go on, try to make sure that they should go creditably and decently. Thus, poor folk might have been cheerful without having their conscience stinging them all the time: and let it be remembered, that if you pervert a man's moral sense (which you may quite readily do with the uneducated classes) into fancying that it is wicked to use the right hand or the right foot, while the man still goes on using the right hand and the right foot, you do him an irreparable mischief: you bring on a temper of moral recklessness; and help him a considerable step towards the gallows. Since people must have amusement and will have amusement, for any sake do not get them to think that amusement is wicked. You can not keep them from finding recreation of some sort: you may drive them to find it at a lower level, and to partake of it soured by remorse, and by So it is worth while to work, if it were the wretched resolution that they will only that we might enjoy play. Thus have it, right or wrong. Instead of ana- doth Mr. Heliogabalus, my next neighthematizing all play, sympathize with it bor, who is a lazy man and an immense genially and heartily; and say, with kind-glutton, walk four miles every afternoon hearted old Burton: "Let the world have their may-games, wakes, whitsunals; their dancings and concerts; their puppet-shows, hobby-horses, tabors, bagpipes, balls, barley-breaks, and whatever sports and recreations please them best, provided they be followed with discretion." Let it be here remarked, that recreation can be fully enjoyed only by the man who has some earnest occupation. The end of work is to enjoy leisure; but to enjoy leisure you must have gone through work. Playtime must come after schooltime, otherwise it loses it savor. Play, after all, is a relative thing: it is not a thing which has an absolute existence. There is no such thing as play, except to the worker. It comes out by contrast. of his life. It is not that he hates exertion less, but that he loves dinner more; and the latter can not be enjoyed unless the former is endured. And the man whose disposition is the idlest may be led to labor when he finds that labor is his only chance of finding any enjoyment in life. James Montgomery sums up much truth in a couple of lines in his Pelican Island, which run thus: "Labor, the symbol of man's punishment; Labor, the secret of man's happiness." Why on earth do people think it fine to be idle and useless? Fancy a drone superciliously desiring a working-bee to to stand aside, and saying: "Out of the way, you miserable drudge; I never made a drop of honey in all my life!" I have observed, too, that some silly people are ashamed that it should be known that they are so useful as they really are, and take pains to represent themselves as more helpless, ignorant, and incapable than the fact. I have heard a weak old lady boast that her grown-up daughters were quite unable to fold up their own dresses; and that as for ordering dinner, they had not a notion of such a thing. This and many similar particulars were stated with no small exultation, and that by a person far from rich and equally far from aristocratic. "What a silly old woman you are," was my silent reflection; "and if your daughters really are what you represent them, woe betide the poor man who shall marry one of the incapable young noodles." Give me the man, I say, who can turn his hand to all things, and who is not ashamed to confess that he can do so; who can preach a sermon, nail up a paling, prune a fruit-tree, make a waterwheel or a kite for his little boy, write an article for Fraser or a leader for the Times or the Spectator. What a fine, genial, many-sided life did Sydney Smith lead at his Yorkshire parish! I should have liked, I own, to have found in it more traces of the clergyman; but perhaps the biographer thought it better not to parade these. And in the regard of facing all difficulties with a cheerful heart, and nobly resolving to be useful and helpful in little matters as well as big, I think that life was as good a sermon as ever was preached from pulpit. I have already said in the course of this rambling discussion, that recreation must be such as shall turn the thoughts into a new channel, otherwise it is no recreation at all. And walking, which is the most usual physical exercise, here completely fails. Walking has grown by long habit a purely automatic act, demanding no attention we think all the time we are walking; Southey even read while he took his daily walk. But Southey's story is a fearful warning. It will do a clergyman no good whatever to leave his desk and to go forth for his constitutional, if he is still thinking of his sermon, and trying to see his way through the treatment of his text. You see in Gray's famous poem how little use is the mere walk to the contemplative man, how thoroughly it falls short of the end of play. You see how the hectic lad who is supposed to have written the Elegy employed himself when he wandered abroad: "There, at the foot of yonder nodding beach, That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high, His listless length at noontide would he stretch, And pore upon the brook that babbles by. "Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, Muttering his wayward fancies, he would rove; Now drooping, woful, wan, like one forlorn, Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love." That was the fashion in which the poor fellow took his daily recreation and exercise! His mother no doubt packed him out to take a bracing walk; she ought to have set him to saw wood for the fire, or to dig in the garden, or to clean the doorhandles if he had muscle for nothing more. These things would have distracted his thoughts from their grand flights, and prevented his mooning about in that listless manner. Of course while walking he was bothering away about the poetical trash he had in his desk at home; and as he knocked up his ganglionic functions, he encouraged tubercles on his lungs, and came to furnish matter for the hoary-headed swain's narrative, the silly fellow! Riding is better than walking, especially if you have rather a skittish steed, who compels you to attend to him on pain of being landed in the ditch, or sent, meteorlike, over the hedge. The elder Disraeli has preserved the memory of the diversions in which various hard thinkers found relaxation. Petavius, who wrote a deeply learned book, which I never saw, and which no one I ever saw ever heard of, twirled round his chair for five minutes every two hours that he was at work. Samuel Clark used to leap over the tables and chairs. It was a rule which Ignatius Loyola imposed on his followers, that after two hours of work, the mind should always be unbent by some recreation. Every one has heard of Paley's remarkable feats of rapid horsemanship. Hundreds of times did that great man fall off. The Sultan Mohammed, who conquered Greece, unbent his mind by carving wooden spoons. In all these things you see, kindly reader, that true recreation was aimed at: that is, entire change of thought and occupation. Izaak Walton, ing, but who feel it like a cool retreat again, who sets forth so pleasantly the into green fields and trees to turn to his praise of angling as "the Contemplative genial feeling and hearty pictures of quiet Man's Recreation," wrongly thinks to re- English scenery. He, however, had a commend the gentle craft by telling us vast opinion of the joys of angling in a that the angler may think all the while he pleasant country: only let him go quietly plies it. I do not care for angling; I a-fishing: never caught a minnow; but still I joy in good old Izaak's pleasant pages, like thousands who do not care a pin for fish "And if contentment be a stranger then, I'll ne'er look for it, but in heaven again." rom the National Review. GHOSTS OF THE OLD AND NEW SCHOOL. (CONTINUED FROM PAGE 369.) THE remainder of the book is filled with theories deduced from grounds of à priori reasoning and human experience; and from these experiences in particular, with discussions on their nature and influence, deprecation of doubt, and statements of their vast importance at the present time for the spiritual regeneration of man, and earnest applications to us to receive them in a spirit of childlike faith. The other work we have cited has nothing whatever human about it except the printer and publisher. From cover to cover it is the work of "an angel of heaven," who has dictated it word for word to a lady for our benefit. "Ce que femme veut, Dieu veut"-how much more, then, a solitary mankind-angel; and we can not help feeling that the present one has deferentially permitted the lady to suggest to him what he should dictate to her. At any rate, if any one be curious to know how an angel of heaven writes, we can assure him it is exactly as an amiable and enthusiastic woman would do, who possessed warm feelings, a devotional spirit, and a somewhat limited stock of ideas. He will find the angel in question without bigotry, and willing to submit his lucubrations to the judgment of his human readers; who are permitted, and even urged, to pass by his truths if they find themselves unequal to their acceptance. He will even find in him occasional signs of diffidence as to his being an angel in heaven, or a lady in the flesh. He insists strongly on the importance of an unqualified acceptance of every word of Scripture; and tells us the outward letter has an esoteric meaning, and sometimes more than one, each deeper and more interior than the other. And while he tells us he is sent to confirm our faith in the great Book of Life, and bids us set him aside if he contradict one word of the Bible, he gives us a signal example of the precariousness of our trust in the meanings it is in our own power to extract; for one main object of his work is to contravene the saying of our Saviour, that after death we are neither married nor given in marriage, but are as the angels which are in heaven. These words are to be understood according to the spirit, not the letter; and so construed, they mean that there are marriages in heaven, with this distinction, that we are to them not conjugally but "conjugially" united, according to the spirit, not according to the flesh. On this idea hinges the romance which is embodied in the work. The angel left this world at middle age, without having contracted any matrimonial tie; the lady |