It is the day when the strait gate has oftenest opened and ushered happy pilgrims on the path of peace. Even the gospel, without the Sabbath, would have done the world little good; for without the Sabbath the world would never have taken time to attend to the gospel.-The Rev James Hamilton, D.D.

IT WILL NEVER DO TO BE IDLE.

There is a village called Cherry-Hinton, lying wide of any highway, and within two or three miles of Cambridge. The footpath to it is crossed midway, or thereabouts, by a little brook, and that brook itself, accompanied by a pathway, winds its unambitious way onward to the village, through certain rich corn-fields and solitary meadows. This was my usual walk, my path of contemplation. From some unaccountable neglect it was very little frequented, though in itself as pretty as any out of Cambridge. Scarcely was it trodden, save by a few late and early market-goers, and, haply, now and then a milkwoman. The dusty footpath, with the chance of an occasional gossip, was more to the taste of the commonalty than the modest half-worn track, the verdure, the coolness, the sequestration -in a word, the poetry, of my own choice. I was in no danger of interruption by my sporting friends, who would have stared at me in such a spot as if they had seen a ghost, and regarded me ever afterwards as a man under a cloud- —as one addicted to strange solitary habits.

I remember one day I had racked myself out of all patience in my attempts to overthink a subject, to master it by the sheer force of thought. In a state of exhaustion and discomfiture I leaned against a gate-post, and suffered my sight to rest upon the surface of the stream, and amuse itself by the objects carried down by it. There was an angle of the bank close by, and I indulged myself some time in the idle speculation whether or not the sticks and straws that I saw floating along might chance to double it. My mind was martyred with its distractions, and it occurred to me, by a sudden thought, that here was a way to put an end to them. I marked a particular straw in its descent, and made an errnest vow, that, according as it should pass the promontory or fail to do so, I would persist or not in my thoughtfulness-that, as the straw might rule me, I would strive onwards

through a host of pains and penalties, or else retire at once from the contest, and, as the negroes say, 'sit down softly,' content to be a common man-one of the mere vulgar.

My determination was strong at the moment, so strong that I am by no means sure that it was not decisive, that it has not governed my destinies ever since. Well, I watched my pilot-boat as it came down. It passed gently on. Here and there it met with an obstruction, but it was only for a moment; it doubled the cape- the Cape of Good Hope, as it really was for me. I received the augury with all acceptance, and returned with a light heart.

Somehow or other, after this incident, whether by force of it, or from whatever cause, I got into a better vein. I abandoned once for all the part of the selftormentor. I forebore to force myself. I suffered my mind, like a froward child, to fall asleep, and so recover itself from the excitement of its frowardness. Instead of hallooing on when I had overrun the scent, I drew back quietly and cannily to the point where I was last sure of it, and endeavoured to hit it off afresh. Í returned from thought to literature, from my late hard taskmaster to my former gentle mistress. I read at large. I roved about at my free will in the wide and varied common of our college library, with no other condition than that of commenting in my own mind, as I went along, upon every book that I might be reading, and every chapter of that book. This was the best restorative process imaginable. I soon got heart of grace upon it, and recruited the exhaustion of my spirits. I found it was but lost pains to attempt to add a cubit to my intellectual stature by force of thinking. I took better counsel, and resigned all care of my growth to time, patience, and steady but gentle perseverance. And I soon found that, instead of racking myself to no purpose, as I had done heretofore, I was gradually making way and widening my circle.

My wayfarings to this village of fruitful, though, for anything that I could ever learn, fallacious entitlement-this village with a name that waters on one's tongue, though it keeps not the word of promise to one's palate-my pilgrimages, I say, thither were of good account to me through another mere accident. One day, on my return, I was driven to take shelter from a rain-storm in a little hovel by

the road-side a sort of cobbler's stall. The tenant and his son were upon their work, and, after the customary use of greetings, I entered familiarly into talk with them, as indeed I always do, seeing that your cobbler is often a man of contemplative faculty-that there is really something of mystery in his craft. Before I had been with them long, the old man found that there lacked something for his work, and in order to provide it he sent his son out on a job of some five minutes. The interval was a short one, but it was too long for his active impatience; he became uneasy, shuffled about the room, and at last took up a scrap or two of leather and fell to work upon them. For,' said he, 'it will never do, you know, sir, to be idle-not at any rate with me-I should faint away.'

I happened just then to be in an impressible mood, without occupation myself, and weighed somewhat down by the want of it; accordingly, the phrase, the oddness of it in the first place, and still more the sense, made a deep and lasting impression upon me. As soon as the rain had spent itself, I went my way homeward, ruminating and revolving what I had heard, like a curious man over a riddle. I could not have bestowed my thoughts better; the subject concerned me nearly, it went to the very heart of my happiness. Some people are perpetual martyrs to idleness, others have only their turns and returns of it; I was of the latter class-a reluctant and 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 realise 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 tendency 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 devils troop in.

The words of the old cobbler were oracular to me. They 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 rot and stink 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 clockwork 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 scapegoat 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 everything; I was active, brisk, and animated (oh! 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

He begins with the error of youth, which is apt to jump as it were at friendship, and to take every profession for an indication of some genuine feeling:

'Candid, and generous, and just,

Boys care but little whom they trust,

An error soon corrected

For who but learns in riper years, That man when smoothest he appears, Is most to be suspected?' But they are apt then-especially very sensitive or very sharp people-to run into equal errors on the other side, and suppose that no such thing as sincere friendship can be found. It may be called an equal error, for though he will be much oftener right who suspects universal insincerity, than he who receives as trustworthy all that is professed, yet the former disposition is so much more fatal to generosity and kindly feeling than the latter, that the error of it, although less extensive, is more mischievous. Cowper does not lose sight of this probable revulsion from too much confidence to too little, and very fairly states the common sense of the matter, thus:

'But here again a danger lies,
Lest having misapplied our eyes,
And taken trash for treasure;
We should unwarily conclude
Friendship a false ideal good,
A mere utopian pleasure.
An acquisition rather rare
Is yet no subject of despair,

Nor is it wise complaining;
If either on forbidden ground,
Or where it was not to be found

We sought without attaining.'

The poem then goes on with a variety of hints, of admirable shrewdness, touching those points which interfere with the permanency of friendship. For example:

'A man renown'd for repartee
Will seldom scruple to make free

With friendship's finest feeling;
Will thrust a dagger at your breast,
And say he wounded you in jest

By way of balm for healing.' This rhyme is as true as any prose that ever was written, and the following stanza is not only true, but has a drollery of allusion that even Sydney Smith might be proud of:

'A friendship that in frequent fits
Of controversial rage emits

The sparks of disputation;
Like "Hand-in-Hand" insurance plates,
Most unavoidably creates

The thought of conflagration.'

The following is still more important as a common-sense observation upon rude familiarity, and not less humorously put:

'The man that hails you Tom or Jack, And proves by thumps upon your back How he esteems your merit,

Is such a friend, that one had need
Be very much his friend indeed,

To pardon or to bear it.'

But we must come to the decision of what a friend ought to be, and here we have it:

'Pursue the search, and you will find
Good sense and knowledge of mankind
To be at least expedient;
And after summing all the rest,
Religion, ruling in the breast,

A principal ingredient.'

This is what your friend should benow for your own part: "Then judge yourself, and prove your man As circumspectly as you can,

And, having made election,
Beware no negligence of yours
Such as a friend but ill endures,
Enfeeble his affection.'

They who are familiar with Cowper will see what strange liberties I have taken with the order of his stanzas. For this I hope to be forgiven, as I have put them so as best to illustrate (at least in my opinion) the course of the subject under discussion.

CONTRADICTION OF PROVERBS.

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'The more the merrier.' Not so; one hand is enough in a purse.-' He that runs fastest gets most ground. Not so; for then the footman would get more than his master.' He runs far who never turns.' Not so; he may break his neck in a short course. No man can till his heart ache, though it never comes. call again yesterday. Yes; he may -' He that goes softly goes safely. Not stomach more than surfeiting.' Yes; among thieves.-'Nothing hurts the lack of meat.-'Nothing is hard to a willing mind.' Yes; to get money. 'None so blind as they that will not see.' Yes; they that cannot see.-' Nothing but what is good for something.' so; nothing is not good for anything.Everything hath an end.' Not so; a ring hath none, for it is round.-'Money is a comfort.' Not when it brings a thief to the gallows.-'The world is a long journey. Not so; the sun goes over it every day. It is a great way to the bottom of the sea.' Not so; it is but a stone-cast.-'A friend is best found in adversity.' Not so; for then there's none to be found. The pride of the rich makes the labour of the poor. Not so; the labours of the poor make the pride of the rich.

Not