admirable humour, and poetical suggestiveness, to sow the seed of the mind freely and lavishly.  We English are of course the chosen race; but we should be none the worse for a little more intellectual apprehension, a little more amiable charm.  If my friend had been a professional man, obliged to earn a living by his pen, he would, I do not doubt, have given to the world a series of great books, which would have done something to spread the influence of the kingdom of heaven.

Of course there is a sense in which it is a mistake to let habits become too tyrannical; one ought not to find oneself hopelessly distracted and irritated if one’s daily programme is interfered with at any point; one ought to be able to enjoy leisure, to pay visits, to converse volubly.  Like Dr. Johnson, one ought to be ready for a frolic.  But, on the other hand, if a man takes himself seriously—­and I am here not speaking of people with definite engagements, but of people, like writers and artists, who may choose their own times to do their work—­he ought to have a regular though not an invariable programme.  If he is possessed of such superabundant energy as Walter Scott possessed, he may rise at five, and write ten immortal octavo pages before he appears at breakfast.  But as a rule the vitality of ordinary people is more limited, and they are bound to husband it, if they mean to do anything that is worth the name; an artist then ought to have his sacred hours, secure from interruption; and then, let him fill the rest of the day with any amusement that he finds to be congenial.

Of course the thing is easy enough if one’s work is really the thing in which one is most interested.  There is very little danger, in the case of a man who likes and relishes the work he is doing more than he relishes any form of amusement; but we many of us have the unhappy feeling that we enjoy our work very much, if we can once sit down to it; only we do not care about beginning it.  We read the paper, we write a few letters, we look out an address in Who’s Who, and we become absorbed in the biographies of our fellow-men; very soon it is time for luncheon, and then we think that we shall feel fresher if we take a little exercise; after tea, the weather is so beautiful that we think it would be a pity not to enjoy the long sunset lights; we come in; the piano stands invitingly open, and we must strike a few chords; then the bell rings for dressing, and the day is gone, because we mistrust the work that we do late at night, and so we go to bed in good time.  Not so does a big book get written!

We ought rather to find out all about ourselves; when we can work our best, how long we can work continuously with full vigour; and then round these fixed points we should group our sociability, our leisure, our amusement.  If we are altruistically inclined, we probably say that it is a duty to see something of our fellow-creatures, that we ought not to grow morose and solitary; there is an abundance of excuses