although men of
exceptional power and very exceptional flexibility may do this with
apparent impunity, that still depends very much on the nature of the
occupation. There are some occupations which are not incompatible with a
fragmentary division of time, because these occupations are themselves
fragmentary. For example, you may study languages in phrase-books during
very small spaces of time, because the complete phrase is in itself a
very small thing, but you could not so easily break and resume the
thread of an elaborate argument. I suspect that though Cuvier appeared
to his contemporaries a man remarkably able to leave off and resume his
work at will, he must have taken care to do work that would bear
interruption at those times when he knew himself to be most liable to
it. And although, when a man's time is unavoidably broken up into
fragments, no talent of a merely auxiliary kind can be more precious
than that of turning each of those fragments to advantage, it is still
true that he whose time is at his own disposal will do his work most
calmly, most deliberately, and therefore on the whole most thoroughly
and perfectly, when he keeps it in fine masses. The mere knowledge that
you have three or four clear hours before you is in itself a great help
to the spirit of thoroughness, both in study and in production. It is
agreeable too, when the sitting has come to an end, to perceive that a
definite advance is the result of it, and advance in anything is
scarcely perceptible in less than three or four hours.

There are several pursuits which _cannot_ be followed in fragments of
time, on account of the necessary preparations. It is useless to begin
oil-painting unless you have full time to set your palette properly, to
get your canvas into a proper state for working upon, to pose the model
as you wish, and settle down to work with everything as it ought to be.
In landscape-painting from nature you require the time to go to the
selected place, and after your arrival to arrange your materials and
shelter yourself from the sun. In scientific pursuits the preparations
are usually at least equally elaborate, and often much more so. To
prepare for an experiment, or for a dissection, takes time which we feel
to be disproportionate when it leaves too little for the scientific work
itself. It is for this reason more frequently than for any other that
amateurs who begin in enthusiasm, so commonly, after a while, abandon
the objec