Idleness seems to be the last accomplishment of civilization.  To be idle gracefully and contentedly and picturesquely is an art.  It is one in which the Americans, who do so many things well, do not excel.  They have made the excuse that they have not time, or, if they have leisure, that their temperament and nervous organization do not permit it.  This excuse will pass for a while, for we are a new people, and probably we are more highly and sensitively organized than any other nation—­at least the physiologists say so; but the excuse seems more and more inadequate as we accumulate wealth, and consequently have leisure.  We shall not criticise the American colonies in Paris and Rome and Florence, and in other Continental places where they congregate.  They know whether they are restless or contented, and what examples they set to the peoples who get their ideas of republican simplicity and virtue from the Americans who sojourn among them.  They know whether with all their leisure they get placidity of mind and the real rest which the older nations have learned to enjoy.  It may not be the most desirable thing for a human being to be idle, but if he will be, he should be so in a creditable manner, and with some enjoyment to himself.  It is no slander to say that we in America have not yet found out the secret of this.  Perhaps we shall not until our energies are spent and we are in a state of decay.  At present we put as much energy into our pleasure as into our work, for it is inbred in us that laziness is a sin.  This is the Puritan idea, and it must be said for it that in our experience virtue and idleness are not commonly companions.  But this does not go to the bottom of the matter.

The Italians are industrious; they are compelled to be in order to pay their taxes for the army and navy and get macaroni enough to live on.  But see what a long civilization has done for them.  They have the manner of laziness, they have the air of leisure, they have worn off the angular corners of existence, and unconsciously their life is picturesque and enjoyable.  Those among them who have money take their pleasure simply and with the least expense of physical energy.  Those who have not money do the same thing.  This basis of existence is calm and unexaggerated; life is reckoned by centimes, not by dollars.  What an ideal place is Venice!  It is not only the most picturesque city in the world, rich in all that art can invent to please the eye, but how calm it is!  The vivacity which entertains the traveler is all on the surface.  The nobleman in his palace if there be any palace that is not turned into a hotel, or a magazine of curiosities, or a municipal office—­can live on a diet that would make an American workman strike, simply because he has learned to float through life; and the laborer is equally happy on little because he has learned to wait without much labor.  The gliding, easy motion of the gondola expresses the whole situation; and the gondolier who with consummate