n all over the world.

But to us utter idlesse is perfect bliss. And why? Because, like a lull
at sea, or _lown_ on land, it is felt to descend from Heaven on man's
toilsome lot. The lull and the lown, what are they when most profound,
but the transient cessation of the restlessness of winds and waters--a
change wrought for an hour of peace in the heart of the hurricane!
Therefore the sailor enjoys it on the green wave--the shepherd on the
greensward; while the memory of mists and storms deepens the
enchantment. Even so, Idlesse can be enjoyed but by those who are
permitted to indulge it, while enduring the labours of an active or a
contemplative life. To use another, and a still livelier image--see the
pedlar toiling along the dusty road, with an enormous pack, on his
excursion; and when off his aching shoulders slowly falls back on the
bank the loosened load, in blessed relief think ye not that he enjoys,
like a very poet, the beauty of the butterflies that, wavering through
the air, settle down on the wildflowers around him that embroider the
wayside! Yet our pedlar is not so much either of an entomologist or a
botanist as not to take out his scrip, and eat his bread and cheese with
a mute prayer and a munching appetite--not idle, it must be confessed,
in that sense--but in every other idle even as the shadow of the
sycamore, beneath which, with his eyes half-open--for by hypothesis he
is a Scotsman--he finally sinks into a wakeful, but quiet half-sleep.
"Hallo! why are you sleeping there, you _idle_ fellow?" bawls some
beadle, or some overseer, or some magistrate, or perhaps merely one of
those private persons who, out of season and in season, are constantly
sending the sluggard to the ant to learn wisdom--though the ant, Heaven
bless her! at proper times sleeps as sound as a sick-nurse.

We are now the idlest, because once were we the most industrious of men.
Up to the time that we engaged to take an occasional glance over the
self-growing sheets of The Periodical, we were tied to one of the oars
that move along the great vessel of life; and we believe that it was
allowed by all the best watermen, that

"We feather'd our oars with skill and dexterity."

But ever since we became an Editor, our repose, bodily and mental, has
been like that of a Hindoo god. Often do we sit whole winter nights,
leaning back on our chair, more like the image of a man than a man
himself, with shut eyes, that keep seeing in success