Due by a brother worm to me, Words cannot paint the fiendish smile Then pray'd it might not chafe my mood- I mark'd his heart-the bow I drew I loosed the shaft-'twas more than true! I found my Edith's dying charms Her state, and reconcile her sire. "All fled my rage-the villain first, Whose craft my jealousy had nursed; He sought in far and foreign clime Of raving till my flesh was torn, And bore her, with her charge, away. Him, then, I sought, with purpose dread "Twas then that fate my footsteps led Much then I learn'd, and much can show, Yet ne'er have, in my wanderings, known Upon the wounded and the dead, While, sense and toil in wassail drown'd, There came a voice—its silver tone Was soft, Matilda, as thine own— 'Ah, wretch!' it said, 'what makest thou here, "I heard-obey'd-and homeward drew; The fiercest of our desperate crew I brought at time of need to aid I've seen his face-I've heard his voice I claim'd of him my only child- Scott. LABOUR AND RECREATION. OUR The more UR modern system of division of labour divides wits also. necessity there is, therefore, for finding in recreation something to expand man's intelligence. There are intellectual pursuits almost as much divided as pin-making; and many a man goes through some intellectual process, for the greater part of his working hours, which corresponds with the making of a pin's-head. Must there not be some danger of a general contraction of mind from this convergence of attention upon something very small, for so considerable a portion of man's life? I have seen it quoted in Aristotle, that the end of labour is to gain leisure. It is a great saying. We have in modern times a totally wrong view of the matter. Noble work is a noble thing, but not all work. Most people seem to think that any business is in itself something grand; that to be intensely employed, for instance, about something which has no truth, beauty, or usefulness in it, which makes no man happier or wiser, is still the perfection of human endeavour, so that the work be intense. It is the intensity, not the nature of the work, that men praise. You see the extent of this feeling in little things. People are so ashamed of being caught for a moment idle, that if you come upon the most industrious servants or workmen whilst they are standing looking at something which interests them, or fairly resting, they move off in a fright, as if they were proved, by a moment's relaxation, to be neglectful of their work. Yet it is the result that they should mainly be judged by, and to which they should appeal. But amongst all classes, the working itself, incessant working, is the thing deified. Now what is the end and object of most work? To provide for animal wants. Not a contemptible thing, by any means, but still it is not all in all with man. Moreover, in those cases where the pressure of bread-getting is fairly past, we do not often find men's exertions lessened on that account. There enter into their minds as motives, ambition, a love of hoarding, or a fear of leisure, things which, in moderation, may be defended or even justified, but which are not so peremptorily, and upon the face of them excellent, that they at once dignify excessive labour. The truth is, that to work insatiably requires much less mind than to R work judiciously, and less courage than to refuse work that cannot be done honestly. For a hundred men whose appetite for work can be driven on by vanity, avarice, ambition, or a mistaken notion of advancing their families, there is about one who is desirous of expanding his own nature and the nature of others in all directions, of cultivating many pursuits, of bringing himself and those around him in contact with the universe in many points, of being a man and not a machine. |