ried and lost beneath a mountain of sloth and
laziness had not God determined otherwise. He had in his early years
chalked out for himself a plan of life in which he had his own ease and
self-indulgence solely in view; he had no particular bad passions to
gratify, he only wished to lead an easy quiet life, just as if the
business of this mighty world could be carried on by innocent people fond
of ease and quiet, or that Providence would permit innocent quiet drones
to occupy any portion of the earth and to cumber it. God had, at any
rate, decreed that this man should not cumber it as a drone. He brings a
certain affliction upon him, the agony of which produces that terrible
whirling of the brain which, unless it is stopped in time, produces
madness; he suffers indescribable misery for a period, until one morning
his attention is arrested and his curiosity is aroused by certain Chinese
letters on a teapot; his curiosity increases more and more, and, of
course, in proportion as his curiosity is increased with respect to the
Chinese marks, the misery in his brain produced by his mental affliction
decreases. He sets about learning Chinese, and after the lapse of many
years, during which his mind subsides into a certain state of
tranquillity, he acquires sufficient knowledge of Chinese to be able to
translate with ease the inscriptions to be found on its singular
crockery. Yes, the laziest of human beings, through the providence of
God--a being, too, of rather inferior capacity--acquires the written part
of a language so difficult that, as Lavengro said on a former occasion,
none but the cleverest people in Europe, the French, are able to acquire
it. But God did not intend that man should merely acquire Chinese. He
intended that he should be of use to his species, and, by the
instrumentality of the first Chinese inscription which he translates, the
one which first arrested his curiosity, he is taught the duties of
hospitality; yes, by means of an inscription in the language of a people
who have scarcely an idea of hospitality themselves, God causes the
slothful man to play a useful and beneficent part in the world, relieving
distressed wanderers, and, amongst others, Lavengro himself. But a
striking indication of the man's surprising sloth is still apparent in
what he omits to do; he has learnt Chinese, the most difficult of
languages, and he practises acts of hospitality because he believes
himself enjoined to do so b