nest
highminded man would revolt at the idea of sitting down to and enjoying
a feast, and then going away without paying his share of the reckoning.
To be idle and useless is neither an honour nor a privilege; and though
persons of small natures may be content merely to consume--FRUGES
CONSUMERE NATI--men of average endowment, of manly aspirations, and of
honest purpose, will feel such a condition to be incompatible with real
honour and true dignity.

"I don't believe," said Lord Stanley [13now Earl of Derby] at Glasgow,
"that an unemployed man, however amiable and otherwise respectable, ever
was, or ever can be, really happy. As work is our life, show me what you
can do, and I will show you what you are. I have spoken of love of one's
work as the best preventive of merely low and vicious tastes. I will
go further, and say that it is the best preservative against petty
anxieties, and the annoyances that arise out of indulged self-love. Men
have thought before now that they could take refuge from trouble and
vexation by sheltering themselves as it were in a world of their own.
The experiment has, often been tried, and always with one result. You
cannot escape from anxiety and labour--it is the destiny of humanity....
Those who shirk from facing trouble, find that trouble comes to them.
The indolent may contrive that he shall have less than his share of the
world's work to do, but Nature proportioning the instinct to the work,
contrives that the little shall be much and hard to him. The man who has
only himself to please finds, sooner or later, and probably sooner than
later, that he has got a very hard master; and the excessive weakness
which shrinks from responsibility has its own punishment too, for where
great interests are excluded little matters become great, and the
same wear and tear of mind that might have been at least usefully and
healthfully expended on the real business of life is often wasted
in petty and imaginary vexations, such as breed and multiply in the
unoccupied brain." [138]

Even on the lowest ground--that of personal enjoyment--constant useful
occupation is necessary. He who labours not, cannot enjoy the reward of
labour. "We sleep sound," said Sir Walter Scott, "and our waking
hours are happy, when they are employed; and a little sense of toil is
necessary to the enjoyment of leisure, even when earned by study and
sanctioned by the discharge of duty."

It is true, there are men who die of over