hours
together in shuffling and dividing a pack of cards, with no other
conversation but what is made up of a few game phrases, and no other
ideas but those of black or red spots ranged together in different
figures. Would not a man laugh to hear any one of this species
complaining that life is short?

The stage might be made a perpetual source of the most noble and useful
entertainments, were it under proper regulations.

But the mind never unbends itself so agreeably as in the conversation of
a well-chosen friend. There is indeed no blessing of life that is any
way comparable to the enjoyment of a discreet and virtuous friend. It
eases and unloads the mind, clears and improves the understanding,
engenders thoughts and knowledge, animates virtue and good resolutions,
soothes and allays the passions, and finds employment for most of the
vacant hours of life.

Next to such an intimacy with a particular person, one would endeavour
after a more general conversation with such as are able to entertain and
improve those with whom they converse, which are qualifications that
seldom go asunder.

There are many other useful amusements of life which one would endeavour
to multiply, that one might on all occasions have recourse to something
rather than suffer the mind to lie idle, or run adrift with any passion
that chances to rise in it.

A man that has a taste of music, painting, or architecture, is like one
that has another sense, when compared with such as have no relish of
those arts. The florist, the planter, the gardener, the husbandman, when
they are only as accomplishments to the man of fortune, are great reliefs
to a country life, and many ways useful to those who are possessed of
them.

But of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its
empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors. But this
I shall only touch upon, because it in some measure interferes with the
third method, which I shall propose in another paper, for the employment
of our dead, inactive hours, and which I shall only mention in general to
be the pursuit of knowledge.

Part Two.

--_Hoc est_
_Vivere bis_, _vita posse priore frui_.

MART., _Ep._ x. 23.

The present joys of life we doubly taste,
By looking back with pleasure to the past.

The last method which I proposed in my Saturday's paper, for filing up
those empty spaces of life which are so tedious and burth