ll day long, and often far into the
night. When the day's work is over I generally feel very tired, and want
rest; but if I don't happen to feel quite so tired, then it is not work
that I need, but recreation, of which I get very little. I never feel
the courage to set to work at the French grammar, though it would be
both pleasant and useful to me to know French; indeed, I constantly feel
the want of it. It might, perhaps, be possible to learn from a
phrase-book in the railway train, but to save time I always travel at
night. Being a married man, I have to give my whole attention to my
business."

A solicitor with a large practice in London held nearly the same
language. He worked at his office all day, and often brought home the
most difficult work for the quiet of his own private study after the
household had gone to bed. The little reading that he could indulge in
was light reading. In reality the profession intruded even on his few
hours of leisure, for he read many of the columns in the _Times_ which
relate to law or legislation, and these make at the end of a few years
an amount of reading sufficient for the mastery of a foreign literature.
This gentleman answered very accurately to M. Taine's description of
the typical Englishman, absorbed in business and the _Times_.

In these cases it is likely that the effect of marriage was not inwardly
felt as a deviation; but when culture has been fairly begun, and
marriage hinders the pursuit of it, or makes it deviate from the chosen
path, then there is often an inward consciousness of the fact, not
without its bitterness.

A remarkable article on "Luxury," in the second volume of the _Cornhill
Magazine_, deals with this subject in a manner evidently suggested by
serious reflection and experience. The writer considers the effects of
the pursuit of comfort (never carried so far as it is now) on the higher
moral and intellectual life. The comforts of a bachelor were not what
the writer meant; these are easily procured, and seldom require the
devotion of all the energies. The "comfort" which is really dangerous to
intellectual growth is that of a family establishment, because it so
easily becomes the one absorbing object of existence. Men who began life
with the feeling that they would willingly devote their powers to great
purposes, like the noble examples of past times who labored and suffered
for the intellectual advancement of their race, and had starvation for
their