e." Those who read the times and seasons in the aspect of the
heavens and the configurations of the stars, who count by moons and
know when the sun rises and sets, are by no means ignorant of their
own affairs or of the common concatenation of events. People in such
situations have not their faculties distracted by any multiplicity of
inquiries beyond what befalls themselves, and the outward appearances
that mark the change. There is, therefore, a simplicity and clearness
in the knowledge they possess, which often puzzles the more learned. I
am sometimes surprised at a shepherd-boy by the roadside, who sees
nothing but the earth and sky, asking me the time of day--he ought to
know so much better than any one how far the sun is above the horizon.
I suppose he wants to ask a question of a passenger, or to see if he
has a watch. Robinson Crusoe lost his reckoning in the monotony of his
life and that bewildering dream of solitude, and was fain to have
recourse to the notches in a piece of wood. What a diary was his! And
how time must have spread its circuit round him, vast and pathless as
the ocean!

For myself, I have never had a watch nor any other mode of keeping
time in my possession, nor ever wish to learn how time goes. It is a
sign I have had little to do, few avocations, few engagements. When I
am in a town, I can hear the clock; and when I am in the country, I
can listen to the silence. What I like best is to lie whole mornings
on a sunny bank on Salisbury Plain, without any object before me,
neither knowing nor caring how time passes, and thus "with
light-winged toys of feathered Idleness" to melt down hours to
moments. Perhaps some such thoughts as I have here set down float
before me like motes before my half-shut eyes, or some vivid image of
the past by forcible contrast rushes by me--"Diana and her fawn, and
all the glories of the antique world;" then I start away to prevent
the iron from entering my soul, and let fall some tears into that
stream of time which separates me farther and farther from all I once
loved! At length I rouse myself from my reverie, and home to dinner,
proud of killing time with thought, nay even without thinking.
Somewhat of this idle humour I inherit from my father, though he had
not the same freedom from _ennui_, for he was not a metaphysician; and
there were stops and vacant intervals in his being which he did not
know how to fill up. He used in these cases, and as an obvious
resou