edge of unknown countries, and inspired with the spirit of adven ture therein; and that all education is half worthless-is mere mockery of the poor child's fortune-which does not train him in physical strength, in the art of " fighting the wilderness," and such mechanical knowledge as shall conduce to success therein. I -am for workmen being given whatever education gentlemen have, and including in it such instruction as shall make a youth so much of a carpenter and a farmer that he shall know how to clear ground, put up a log-house, and understand land, crops, and the management of livestock. Without this knowledge, a mechanic, or clerk, or even an M. A. of Oxford, is more helpless than a common farm-laborer, who cannot spell the name of the poorhouse which sent him out. We have in Europe surplus population. Elsewhere lie rich and surplus acres. The new need of progress is to transfer overcrowding workmen to the unoccupied prairies. Parents shrink from the idea of their sons having to leave their own country; but they have to do this when they become soldiers-the hateful agents of empire lately-carrying desolation and death among people as honest as themselves, but more unfortunate. Half the courageTM which leads young men to perish at Isandula, or on the rocks of Afghanistan, would turn into a paradise the wildest wilderness in the world of which they would become the proprietors. While honest men are doomed to linger anywhere in poverty and precariousness, this world is not fit for a gentleman to live in. Dives may have his purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day. I, for one, pray that the race of Dives may increase; but what I wish also is, that never more shall a Lazarus be found at his gates.

GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE, in the Nineteenth Century.

ON HAVING TOO MUCH AND TOO LITTLE TO DO. AMONG the various classifications to which human beings may be subjected, there is one that makes them consist respectively of those who have too much and those who have too little to do. As a rule, however, a great deal of error lurks under a sweeping generalization. Nothing is so false as facts, except figures, to which we may also add except philosophical “ generalizations. Of course there are a set of people who have too much and another set who have too little to do; but my belief is that the majority of people belong to both categories, that at varying times of their life they have respectively too much and too little to do. Of the two sharply contrasted classes it must be much more comfortable and agreeable to belong to the latter; but on the broad principle

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that it is better to wear out than to rust out, it may be supposed that the first lot may intrinsically be more human and more honorable. It happens in the case of multitudes of people that they have really too little to do in early life; they have seasons of much holiday and glorious leisure; then comes the long middle stretch of life with its incessant activities; and then, when men retire from business, or business retires from them, there is the protracted evening during which many who have had too much now find that once more they have too little to do. Of course the real philosophy of life is to hit the golden mean, to steer between the too much and too little; but practically there are quite sufficient people who miss the mean to furnish us with an article on them and their ways.

Oh, this ample, blessed, glorious season of youth, with its leisure and independence and hopes and chances! In these days especially, when the home rule is so mild and loving very different from the Rhadamanthine rigor which some of us remember-when the tone of our public schools is infinitely altered and softened, when even the universities lay as much stress on rackets and the river as upon lectures and chapel, there is a season of leisure which may never come back again in life, or perhaps not till life is nearing its final rapids. There are many young people whose lives are miserably overtaxed in working for open scholarships at school; but there are also numbers who really seem to have too little to do. And it is just possible that early in life young people may acquire an inveterate habit of this too little, which may last all through life and thoroughly spoil it for them. One of our greatest judges was lamenting to a friend of mine the other day that he was altogether behind in the literature of the day. If you go to a barrister or member of Parliament in the full tide of activity, he will probably tell you that he has no time for reading; and if you are a youngster he will probably exhort you to do what you can in the way of reading while you are young, because when you have too much to do there will be no time for it. It may be said generally of our jeunesse dorée that they have too little to do. all sorts of diabolical proverbs about such_men: tempts other men, but idle men tempt the devil. dances in an idle head.'

There are The devil "The devil

Of course this applies to our very charming but somewhat volatile young friend, the girl of the period. That interesting young woman frequently answers to the name of Lady Clara Vere de Vere. We all know that that very unsettled young person had a great deal too little to do.

"Is time so heavy on your hands,

You needs must play such pranks as these ?"

Such young people speak of pastime, i.e., passing time, also of kill ing time, and are frequently pathetic in their declarations that they

have "nothing to do.' "Then our poet remonstrates with "Clara," and altogether shows us that "Clara" is in a very bad way. One does not require to be an heiress to have Clara's faults.

"Clara, Clara Vere de Vere,

If time be heavy on your hands,
Are there no beggars at your gates,
Or any poor about your lands?
Oh, teash the orphan boy to read,

Or teach the orphan girl to sew."

Certainly the most plentiful class of those who have "too little to do" was mainly recruited from young ladies. They had a plentiful and even a perilous amount of leisure on their hands. We are improving all this. Women are beginning to find out their mission. They now make nurses, Sisters of Mercy, doctors (I think their doctoring ought to be limited to women and children), telegraph clerks, members of school boards, mistresses of board schools, which many young ladies might find pleasanter and more remunerative than governessing. It is only to be feared that there are still many young ladies who do too little, who, if they did not look so far afield and only just looked at home, might have reason to alter their complaint of the too little into that of the too much. And this also is to be noted as a curious fact, that many who com plain of the too much are, in point of fact, among those who have the too little. My clerical friends often tell me that they can find hard worked mothers of large families who will give them effective help in their parishes, while childless mothers, or widows, or leisurely young ladies will plead a multiplicity of engagements. But this experience is as old as the hills. Horace talks of his strenuous idleness, and Grotius confesses his habit of laboriously doing nothing.

I am always very sorry for those who have too little to do. They seem to me scarcely to have a fair chance in the world. Their natures are not properly taxed and tested, trained and developed. They might have been among the great and wise and good and famous in the world; but they have fallen back into the ranks of the ignavum pecus. Their liberation from the common cares and activities of life, on which, perhaps, they prided and plumed themselves, is their drawback and their bane. It is even possible that it may help to kill them. A traveller who visited the Pitcairn Islanders in their lonely Pacific home found some of them dying of sheer old age when between fifty and sixty. They had too little to do. The rough fibre of life, for its due adjustment, needs a certain amount of work and worry-of working against the collar, of straining against wind and tide.

One day two strangers met at a little inn in the Isle of Wight. One was a medical man; the other was a man of letters, whose avocations gave him incessant work and called him into all sorts

of places. I expect that the same desire for repose had brought them through different paths to this same quiet haven of rest. In the morning the special correspondent-so we had better designate him-lay languidly on the grass, plucking buttercups and daisies, and gazing languidly into the blue depths of the sky. Charles James Fox used to say that there was only one thing better than lying on the grass with a book, and that was lying on the grass without a book.

The medical man watched him. Those medical men often have a trick of watching every one. Their fellow-creatures are their books, and they get into the habit of scanning such pages very swiftly.

Sir," said the medical man, "I should think that you were rather fond of lying on the grass and gathering daisies.

Sir," was the answer, "I have a passion for it. I should like nothing better in life than to lie on the ground and pluck the daisies.

And yet, sir," was the rejoinder, "I have a strong idea that you are a man who goes about a great deal in the world, and takes an interest in a great many subjects.

"I go about a great deal too much, and work a great deal more than I like. If I had my choice in life, I should lie all day long on the grass and pick daisies.'

2.9

Do you know, sir, what would be the probable result of your having too little to do?"

Well, what would it be?"

To shut up

It would probably be an attack of paralysis. work would probably be to close your existence. And practically this is a kind of thing which does not happen so infrequently as might be supposed. It is always a dangerous crisis for the professional man who retires from the full tide of business without having learned the art of cultivating and enjoying leisure. Men of the highest professional eminence have found themselves absolutely stranded when they have passed from the condition of having too much to that of having too little to do. One might here tell tragic narratives of melancholy despair and suicide.

There are some persons who appear to be absolutely insatiable in their desire for work. The more they have, the more they want. They are absolute gluttons in the way of business. They are a description of people who always carry note-books and pocket-books with them, and seem to have a positive delight in accumulating memoranda, and, it is only fair to say, in industriously working through them when the proper time and opportunity arrive. Then they check them off with great internal chuckling and delight, and commence upon a new series. Such people, no doubt, are very

kind and well-intentioned; but they are often their own worst enemies. One day I asked my friend Jones to make an appointment with me. There were good reasons why we should spend an hour together. Jones consulted his little book. There was no day, scarcely any hour in any day, that had not its engagement for the next fortnight. It was a matter of the most elaborate calculation before a time could be fixed. One day Jones met one of these intensely busy people-rather a distinguished man in his waydown at Westminster. He spoke, and very truly, of the multiplicity of his engagements. "I will give you a bit of advice, my friend," said he. "Go to Westminster Pier and take the penny steamer to London Bridge and back." "Yes," he answered, with a sigh, there are no doubt plenty of cheap amusements around us, only there is no time for them." Of course he did not take the penny steamer. Instead of taking penny steamers he got ill and died.

The nervous system will not stand more than a certain amount. If you do not treat it well it becomes paralyzed, as our friend in the Isle of Wight explained. It appears to me that a man is almost as badly off as a convict-prisoner if he is tied up to the moral triangle every day of his life by those mems in his pocketbook. What time does he leave himself for reading and thinking, for his own private tastes and pursuits?

There are some men who have not only the taste for hard work and the capacity for it, but are also under the necessity of it by reason of their great position. They cannot escape from having too much to do. The Prime Minister, or the Attorney-General, or any professional man works in a way that would be disdained by his lowest menial. A great man becomes great by reason of the survival of the fittest. Look at our great men! What broad chests and abdomina they have! What hard heads inside and outside! Look at such a man as Mr. Gladstone, who at one epoch has the cares of empire upon his shoulders, and at another invests his little fortune in post-cards, and answers every inquiry as if he were the editor of Notes and Queries or of the Family Herald itself. He is like an elephant that can either crack a nut or prostrate an oak. Among the last letters of George Canning is one in which he mentions Pozzo Borgo's secret of getting through much work. It was l'un après l'autre. It was the keeping of things distinctthe thoroughly doing one thing before you went on to the other. There is the fairy order whose wand reduces the most heterogeneous materials to comparative simplicity. For many people the work is simply impossible. I know a man who gets about three thousand letters every morning. He sends a cart for them every morning to the General Post Office, and of course the government is anxious to give him every facility. He has a small army of