f there has been any
deliberate choice, though perhaps the life of action that you lead may
have grown rather out of circumstances determining habit than from any
conscious resolution. Health is so much more necessary to happiness than
culture, that few who could choose between them would sacrifice it for
learning, unless they were impelled by irresistible instincts. And
beyond the great delight of health and strength there is a restlessness
in men born to be active which must have its outlet in activity. I knew
a brave Italian who had followed Garibaldi in all his romantic
enterprises, who had suffered from privation and from wounds, who had
not only faced death in the wildest adventures, but, what is even more
terrible to the active temperament, had risked health from frequent
exposure; and when I asked him whether it was affection to his famous
chief, or faith in a political creed, or some more personal motive that
had led him to this scorn of prudence, he answered that, after honest
self-examination, he believed the most powerful motive to be the
passion for an active life. The active temperament likes physical
action for its own sake, and not as a means of health. Activity renews
itself and claims larger and larger satisfaction, till at last the habit
of it absorbs the whole energy of the man.

Although such a life as yours would be incompatible with the work I have
to do, it would be an unmixed benefit to me to take a greater interest
in exercise. If you could but communicate that interest, how willingly
would I become your pupil! The fatal law of the studious temperament is,
that in exercise itself it must find some intellectual charm, so that we
quit our books in the library only to go and read the infinite book of
nature. We cannot go out in the country without incessantly thinking
about either botany, or geology, or landscape painting, and it is
difficult for us to find a refuge from the importunate habit of
investigation. Sport is the only refuge, but the difficulty is to care
about it sufficiently to avoid _ennui_. When you have not the natural
instinct, how are you to supply its place by any make-believe
excitement? There is no position in the world more wearisome than that
of a man inwardly indifferent to the amusement in which he is trying to
take part. _You_ can watch for game with an invincible patience, for you
have the natural instinct, but after the first ten minutes on the skirts
of the wood I lay m