Tt always seemed to me unnecessary to point out the essential value of Idlcness and its place in the very forefront of the virtues, but I learn that in these latter days some disappointed Diogenes of a philosopher, who never knew what properly it is to dream away a summer's day ona sunny slope or lie stretched out at. avenin shelley indis pocket, watching the Pleiads.
'Rising thro' the mellow shade, Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled ina silver braid," such a numskull ignoramus, I hear, has been preaching what he is pleased to call the Gospel of Work. Now there are always disciples in waiting to run away after false do: trine, especially when it comes clad in some 37 red volumes and is thundered forth with the vehemence of a man who knows all the while that he has only to bluster sufficiently and he will yet plenty to believe that white is really white and not black after all—as you and I, dear reader, know it very well to be. This, and this alone, prompts me to the exertion of taking a pen in defence of our threatened liberties, for were this theory of work as anything other than an abomination once to strike root in this fair England of ours, farewell, I say. to all our national greatness. We should be no better than our ood, industrious friends, the Germans, and think of the humiliation of having to stamp our gowls "*Mnde in England." because they should be ro excellent and so cheap that, without some such reproach, they would capture all the markets of the world. Mind you, I do not think there need be grave apprehension at present. From the War Office downward, the ancient and well-approved rule of doing us little as possible as slowly as possible has become firmly ingrained in our national character, and for such revolutionaries as Lord K won't mention names—w- show a proper contempt by ending them for five years 12 Indi, where i' is to be hoped a suitably enervating climate may act soothingly ea their elisord-red brain-fundes Work seems t" have been invented very early in the world's history by some learned lunatic, who wanted to improve things, which were already as well as they could reste or a Reformer, whereas he should be. He called himself, perhaps, a Pro-
ave been branded! asa' Meddler in things beyond him. As far as I cun gither no good has ever been derived from work and every wise mother's son seeks (0 escape from it oscarly as hec: n. Nature recoils from it no less decisively than she abhors a vacuum. those who profess to like it—and there have been afew such—are really not in love with the thing work," but put up with it in the hope it is going to bring some bauble or other, as glory, position, wealth, the three most unsatisfactory things any man ever wasted time to win.
Bonnivard, the poet tells us,.paced his cell at Chillon for many weary years till at length his very chains and he grew friends and he regained his freedom with sigh. There have been others, prisoners long to office or warehouse that, when release has come at lst, they have bern as stunned, overwhelmed as the superannuated lia, who has leftist on record: I wondered about thinking Iwas happy, and knowing I was, not." But the soul of the natural healthy man revolts from the degradation' of work. Who is the strong man? He who gets' another to do his work for him. Wh> ts the wise mau? I pause for a different reply.
idleness, then, is what we all hops to attain sooner or Inter, sonner for preference is the "summum bonus" "f life. If you don't believe me, go into any placid old ity, droning its days leisurely along amid ite scented meadows, where talking age and whis-ering youth are at home with content; and then tat train for some Ma-chester or Glasgow, back with the smoke of industry, peopled with pale and wan captives to the Moloch of labour. My heart bleeds to think of the teen we've turned us to In-steal of the lissom giants, who twanged the bow and won us glory' on Crecy field or Agincourt. we have to-day mechanical dwarfs behind Maxims, pretenders to hero-What has wrought these changes? What is it is reducing man with daily' creasing rapidity to the rank of a machine, destined to yet through his allotted task for so many months and years and then depart, one of a great regiment, " unwept, un: honoured, and unsting?"
If they wou'd have any originality, any poetry, any tenderness, any beauty saved to life; if they would have life still livable awhile; if they would leave behind some ray of for coming generations, let the young men rise in their might and break the tyranny of the Professors them burst the bubble reputation of work; let them build once again the neglected altars of freedom and of idleness.
Joux TrocLopyte.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.