this end, let us fix it in our remembrance, that all our Master requires of us is to do what we can: and that if after we have done our utmost, there still remains much more we would wish to do, we must train ourselves to look at it without disquiet, even as we train ourselves to be submissive in the presence of the inexplicable mysteries and the irremediable evils which are inherent in the present system of things. No doubt, it is hard to do this; but it is the clergyman's duty to do it. You have no more right to commit suicide by systematically overtasking your constitution, than by swifter and coarser means. Life is given to you as a trust to make the best of: and probably the worst you can make of it is to cut it short, or to embitter it by physical exhaustion and depression.

I dare say many clergymen with large parishes have known what it is to delight in a day of dreadful rain and hurricane: I mean a day when chimneypots and slates are flying about the streets; and when no question can be raised, even by the most exacting moral sense, as to whether it is possible to go out or not. A forenoon of leisure comes so very seldom, that it is very precious and enjoyable when it comes. The leisure hours commonly attainable are in the evening. If you sit at your desk from ten o'clock in the morning till one or two in the afternoon; and if you then go out to your pastoral work till six: you may very fairly lay it down

as a general rule, that at six the day's work shall be deemed over. In addition to this, it may be well to make the afternoon of Saturday a time of recreation. You will be much fitter for your Sunday work, which implies a good deal of physical fatigue as well as mental wear. And I begin to doubt if it be good or safe to begin the round of labour again on Monday after breakfast: and to think that possibly as much work would be done, and better done, if the forenoon of that day were given to recruiting one's energies after the Sunday duty. And I am not claiming these seasons of leisure for the clergyman, merely for Aristotle's reason: merely because the end of work is to enjoy leisure :' merely because leisure is pleasant, and the hardworking parson has earned it fairly. I think not merely of the pleasure of the pastor, but of the profit of the flock. I do not think it expedient that a Christian congregation should get almost all its religious instruction from a fevered and overdriven mind. I have been struck, in listening to the preaching of one or two very able and very laborious friends, by a certain lack of calmness and sobriety of thought: by a something that reminded one of the atmosphere of a hothouse, and that seemed undefinably inconsistent with the realities of daily life. And it seemed to me that all this came of the fact, that they lived, worked, and wrote, in chronic excitement and hurry.

I trust that my non-clerical readers will pardon

!

all this professional matter: it is a comfort to talk out one's mind even to friends whom one will never see. I dare say discerning folk will know, that the writer has been describing his own constant temptation; and that, however needful he may feel these seasons of rest to be, it is only now and then that he can train himself to take them. And he has found that nothing gives the mind more effectual rest, than change of employment. You have heard, doubtless, of that mill-horse, which all days of the week but Sunday was engaged in walking round and round a certain narrow circle. You may remember what was the Sunday's occupation of that sagacious creature. An unthinking person might have surmised that the horse, which had perpetually to walk on working days, would have chosen on its day of rest to lie still and do nothing. But the horse knew better. It spent Sunday in walking round and round, in the opposite direction from that in which it walked on weekdays. It found rest, in short, not in idleness; but in variation of employment. I commend that horse. I have tried to do something analogous to what it did. These essays have been to me a pleasant change, from the writing of many sermons. And even in leisure hours, if it be (as Sydney Smith said) the nature of the animal to write,' the pen will be taken up naturally and habitually.

I can say sincerely, that more important duties.

have never been postponed to the production of these chapters and I please myself with the belief, that the hands into which this volume is likely to fall, will not be those of total strangers. You may perhaps find, my friendly reader, that these essays of an old friend, whom you knew in the days when he was a country parson, have somewhat changed their character, in consistence with his total change of life. But I have reason to cherish a quiet trust, that they have done good to some of my fellowcreatures. I suppose the like happens to all authors, who write in sincerity and in kindness of heart: but I cannot forget what numbers of men and women otherwise unknown, from either side of the Atlantic, have cheered and encouraged the writer, sometimes in weary hours, by thanking him for some little good impression left by these pages upon heart and life. I have not been able to forego the great delight of trying to produce what might afford some pleasure and profit to friends far beyond the boundaries of my parish; nor have I been able to think that it was my duty to do so.

12

CHAPTER II.

CONCERNING SCREWS:

Being Thoughts on the Practical Service of
Imperfect Means.

A CONSOLATORY ESSAY.

ALMOST every man is what, if he were a

horse, would be called a screw. Almost every man is unsound. Indeed, my reader, I might well say even more than this. It would be no more than truth, to say that there does not breathe any human being who could satisfactorily pass a thorough examination of his physical and moral nature by a competent inspector.

I do not here enter on the etymological question, why an unsound horse is called a screw. Let that be discussed by abler hands. Possibly the phrase set out at length originally ran, that an unsound horse was an animal in whose constitution there was a screw loose. And the jarring effect produced upon any machine by looseness on the part of a screw which ought to be tight, is well known to