fifty years of Europe than a cycle
of Cathay' is profoundly true, and no traveller can fail to be
insensible to the difference in the value of time in a Northern and in a
Southern country. The leisure of some nations seems busier than the work
of others, and few things are more resting to an overwrought and jaded
Anglo-Saxon nature than to pass for a short season into one of those
countries where time seems almost without value.

On the whole there can be little doubt that life in the more civilised
nations has, in our own generation, largely increased. It is not simply
that its average duration is extended. This, in a large degree, is due
to the diminished amount of infant mortality. The improvement is shown
more conclusively in the increased commonness of vigorous and active old
age, in the multitude of new contrivances for economising and therefore
increasing time, in the far greater intensity of life both in the forms
of work and in the forms of pleasure. 'Life at high pressure' is not
without its drawbacks and its evils, but it at least means life which is
largely and fully used.

All intermissions of work, however, even when they do not take the form
of positive pleasure, are not waste of time. Overwork, in all
departments of life, is commonly bad economy, not so much because it
often breaks down health--most of what is attributed to this cause is
probably rather due to anxiety than to work--as because it seldom fails
to impair the quality of work. A great portion of our lives passes in
the unconsciousness of sleep, and perhaps no part is more usefully
spent. It not only brings with it the restoration of our physical
energies, but it also gives a true and healthy tone to our moral nature.
Of all earthly things sleep does the most to place things in their true
proportions, calming excited nerves and dispelling exaggerated cares.
How many suicides have been averted, how many rash enterprises and
decisions have been prevented, how many dangerous quarrels have been
allayed, by the soothing influence of a few hours of steady sleep!
'Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care' is, indeed, in a
careworn world, one of the chief of blessings. Its healing and
restorative power is as much felt in the sicknesses of the mind as in
those of the body, and, in spite of the authority of Solomon, it is
probably a wise thing for men to take the full measure of it, which
undoctored nature demands. The true waste of time of the