say, I have had enough. But the time
will come in which we shall feel that this after all is but little, and
we shall become sluggish, ourselves to communicate, or to excite the
dormant faculties of our friend, when the spring, the waters of which so
long afforded us the most exquisite delight, is at length drawn dry.

I remember in my childish years being greatly struck with that passage
in the Bible, where it is written, "But I say unto you, that, for every
idle word that men shall speak, they shall give an account in the day
of judgment:" and, as I was very desirous of conforming myself to the
directions of the sacred volume, I was upon the point of forming a
sort of resolution, that I would on no account open my mouth to speak,
without having a weighty reason for uttering the thing I felt myself
prompted to say.

But practical directions of this sort are almost in all cases of
ambiguous interpretation. From the context of this passage it is clear,
that by "idle words" we are to understand vicious words, words tending
to instil into the mind unauthorised impulses, that shew in the man who
speaks "a will most rank, foul disproportion, thoughts unnatural," and
are calculated to render him by whom they are listened to, light and
frivolous of temper, and unstrung for the graver duties of human life.

But idle words, in the sense of innocent amusement, are not vicious.
"There is a time for all things." Amusement must not encroach upon
or thrust aside the real business, the important engagements, and
the animated pursuits of man. But it is entitled to take its turn
unreproved. Human life is so various, and the disposition and temper of
the mind of so different tones and capacity, that a wise man will "frame
his face to all occasions." Playfulness, if not carried to too great an
extreme, is an additional perfection in human nature. We become relieved
from our more serious cares, and better fitted to enter on them again
after an interval. To fill up the days of our lives with various
engagements, to make one occupation succeed to another, so as to
liberate us from the pains of ennui, and the dangers of what may in an
emphatical sense be called idleness, is no small desideratum. That king
may in this sense be admitted to have formed no superficial estimate
of our common nature, who is said to have proclaimed a reward to the
individual that should invent a new amusement.

And, to consider the question as it stands in relat