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THE USE OF LEISURE A TEST OF CHARACTER.

The

"STONE walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage." free heart is still free though it lie caged within a prison; its thoughts have as wide a scope, its aims are as lofty, its songs as sweet as though it were at large. And, on the other hand, we may be, we often are, imprisoned and fettered, although no stone walls nor iron bars confine us. "Captives devoid of noble rage," we may quite tamely submit to the loss of our freedom. Captives devoid of ignoble rage, we may wisely limit and circumscribe our freedom, and walk humbly within the bounds of Law and Duty.

We say nothing now of those grosser captivities to Lust and Passion into which we often sell ourselves for the sake of a passing indulgence, breaking for the instant all bonds of Law to find thereafter the whole power of our life lessened and its scope contracted. It is sad beyond all telling to think how many men, in sudden heats of youthful desire, have loaded themselves with fetters of which Death holds the only key. But we are not now to speak of these. There are other more innocent and more general captivities; there are limits within which we voluntarily and wisely restrict our natural freedom of thought and action, though even from these we now and then sigh for release. times release is accorded us; we are set free to go where we will. And in the use we make of our freedom there lies a subtle but singularly accurate test of character. We go where we would be; the direction in which we travel affording no doubtful indication of the bias of our will, the mark at which we aim.

At

I. The natural freedom of human action is limited in many ways, by many causes; but perhaps the most constant and effective of these limitations arise from that necessity of Labour under which we all lie. We must eat to live, and to eat we must work. Morning by morning we rise from our rest, and, instead of following our natural bent, instead of choosing the occupation of the day, we go forth, and are compelled to go forth to a labour that is often irksome and distasteful to us. The sun with its clear shining may give promise of a lovely time; the fields may be green with grass, or bright with flowers, or waving with a wealth of corn; and the birds may sing songs of invitation from every spreading branch or bosky dell. We may think with an infinite longing of the cool breezes that play round the hill-top, or the dim fragrant coverts of the wood, or of pools and caverns by the sea all glowing with the clear rich tints of ulva and coralline, or of the bracing plunge beneath the bracing wave which

would dissipate all the langours of our frame. But none the less we must turn down the accustomed dusty streets, and take our way to workshop or factory or counting-house, and toil through the heat of the day till Evening calls us to brief repose. We cannot take our own way, or have our own will, or do the thing we would. The constraints of Need are upon us. Our freedom is limited, if not wholly withdrawn, by the stern demands of Labour. Liberty yields to Duty, and, as though we were all caged in with stone walls or iron bars, we have to move through a narrow prescribed round, and defer, however reluctantly, to the harsh commands of an authority we cannot resist. If we are of a mutinous spirit, and will at all risks take our own way, the dark cell and sharp scourge of Destitution soon correct our fault.

Is life worth having on these terms? Well, that depends very much on the way in which we handle our conditions, or the temper we bring to the daily round and common task, on the attitude we assume toward the stern inexorable necessities by which we are shut in. For just as "stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage," so also labour is not necessarily a confinement and a curse; it may be a culture and a blessing. We may be free even while we obey, and gain the true liberty by renouncing its counterfeits. And, on the other hand, we may hug our chains in the temper of a slave, or fret and gall ourselves against them in a criminal and rebellious temper.

There are men who, though not loving labour at the first any more than their neighbours, have come to love it either for its own sake or for the sake of its financial results. Their whole soul, "like the dyer's hand, has been subdued to that it wrought in." They have found their supreme good of life in the labour that tasks their strength, or in hoarding and counting over its gains. They have sunk from men into mere drudges toiling on beneath their growing pack, and have lost all love, if not all conception, of the true heritage and hope of man. And there are others who wilfully beat themselves against the bars of their cage, although they only bruise themselves thereby and make their captivity the more galling. They hate the daily task which nevertheless they have to do, and make it tenfold harder by taking it hardly. They sigh for leisure and wealth, not that they may use them wisely and be free to pursue the nobler ends of life, but that they may have their own way and do as they please. And "consider" either this class of men or that, we are often tempted to conclude, "It surely had been better for these men that they had never been born!"-so miserable or so degraded is their life.

as we

But there are still other, and, thank Heaven, many other men who have learned that rudimental paradox-to gain freedom by

obedience, to conquer by submission. If they must live in a cage, and cannot help at times longing for the bright fields and ample sky to which they are native, they will at least make their cage cheerful with songs. They have discovered that their lot and labour are appointed them by a Wise Gracious God who loves them, and who is seeking by the very constraints of Toil to train their faculties for higher service, to surround them with fences and safeguards against the evils which lurk in Indolence and Self-will, to prepare them by labour for rest, and by an earthly obedience for the large liberties of Heaven. And because they trust His wisdom and goodness, they accept the limits appointed for them with a patient heart, and even cheerfully adopt the tasks He allots them. They make His will their will, and therefore in doing His will they do their own. Thus they rise to the true freedom through a glad obedience, and God's statutes become their songs. The prison-house of Necessity is transformed into the home of their choice, and the home is not unfrequently transformed by the Divine Presence into a heaven.

fertile cause of the But there are other

Labour is one cause, then, and a very restrictions within which we are confined. restrictions which, at least to some of us, are still harder to bear; -the restrictions, for instance, imposed by Custom and Convention. Not only are we compelled to tread a daily round of duties; we are also compelled to tread it at a regulated pace and with a prescribed bearing and manner. We are not allowed to dress as we will, nor to speak our thoughts in our own words, nor to allude to certain facts which nevertheless are perfectly notorious, nor, in short, to go about either our pleasure or our business in the way most natural and convenient to us. Society has something to say to us on each of these points, and many more, and delivers her oracles with stinging emphasis. The fear of Mrs. Grundy is before our eyes. It is at our own proper peril that we live a simple natural life-fearing nothing, concealing nothing, reserving nothing, or that we violate a single conventional propriety of tone, dress, manner, speech. And for the most part we find ourselves more or less obliged to submit to the customs of our class, to give in our adhesion to the conventionalisms of Social Order. A new inroad is thus made on our natural freedom; fresh limits are set to the narrow space in which we move; other fetters are snapped on hand and foot.

In our earlier years, when restraint is peculiarly obnoxious to us, we often make a stand for liberty. "These Conventionalisms," we say, " are not of God, though perchance the ordinances of Labour are. No moral duty binds us to observe them. Let

us break these puny bonds in sunder and cast away from us these slight yet galling cords." And so we get up our little rebellion against the customs and manners of the World around us. The World as it can well afford to do-takes our mutiny very calmly, and not illnaturedly on the whole but none the less we soon find ourselves beaten, subdued, bound.

One of the most sorrowful consequences of this general submission to Conventionalism is, that it takes individuality, variety, picturesqueness out of our daily life. We all look very much alike; we all wear very much the same clothes and fall into the same habits: we all do the same things, at the same hours, in the same way. And a very sorrowful consequence of that is, that we do not know each other as we might do and should if our life were more natural, individual, free. We walk side by side, we dwell in the same house even, and yet we are mysteries to one another-problems unsolved and insoluble. Like Wordsworth's star, like Milton's soul, we "dwell apart." We have secret joys which kindle no responsive joys in the hearts of those who stand nearest to us, and secret shames which do not humble them. We may hide a lifelong sorrow under the decorous conventional robe, and, unless some chance wind part the robe, our dearest lover shall not know it: or, like that mournful penitent King of Israel,* we may wear sackcloth within upon the flesh," but unless some new transcendent grief rend the outer garment which hides it, it will never be seen even by our most familiar friend. The young girl has a secret sorrow which her mother might assuage, but it will never be told her. The father has a hidden burden of care or grief or shame which his strong sons would cheerfully help him to bear; but, unless he break down into utter collapse, they will never have a glimpse of it. Thus we go up and down the crowded ways of life with veiled faces, passing each other very close, nay often walking together arm-in-arm, yet after all seeing very little of each other, however curious or tender the eyes which seek to look beneath the veil.

We wear these conventional bonds, however, with a difference. Some men love them and hug them; and as the due reward of their pains they become fops, gossips, parasites, courtiers rather than men. Others rebel against them, and are either worsted in the conflict, or become boors, misanthropes, outlaws, Bohemians. And still others conquer them by submitting to them, so far at least as they are innocuous. They master them, and are not mastered by them. They wear the prescribed dress, adopt the customary tone, go through the usual forms and cour

* 2 Kings, vi. 30.

tesies, and yet remain natural, piquant, original. They recognize the beauty of social order and discover that many of the conventialisms which they once thought fetters and restraints are really safeguards and defences. Thus they meet Society on pleasant terms, and, instead of launching into a petty irritating warfare, are at peace. They submit to conventions and yet rule them; they obey Custom, and yet they are free, nay are thereby free.

II. Now there are occasions on which we are released from our bonds. For the time we are "let go;" we may, though still within certain limits, go where we will. And as in speaking of our captivities we did not dwell on the grosser or sadder bonds of human life, but only of those which are more innocent and general, let us still keep the same level, still make the common ground of life our haunt and theme. We are not to speak of the great crises, then, in which our fetters are violently broken asunder; as, for example, when we change our country or continent, or inherit a large property, or make a sudden fortune, or are set free by the majesty of some transcendant grief, or are quickened to a larger spiritual life. We are rather to speak of the deliverances which are more general and frequent.

Thus, for instance, if we go forth to labour in the morning, we come home for rest at night: and most of us have a few hours-Would they were more!-which we can devote to other than our professional pursuits. We have worn the bonds of labour all the day; we have been shut up within its walls and bars; and now we are "let go;" for a little while at least we are free from those bonds. A brief space of time lies at at our disposal. We can do with it what we please, and we have earned the right to take our pleasure. What shall we do with our evening? Well, some of some us will practise music; some will collect ferns, or moths, or beetles: some will get a little fishing if wind and water promise sport; some will join in athletic games or exercises; some will read and study, changing their labour, and so entering into rest; some will talk with the wife and play with the children; some will tend a garden or work at an invention, or help to keep things straight in the house their labour now being pleasant to them because it is of their own choosing and has love for its motive and inspiration. In short, every man, like the released Apostles, "being let go, will go to his own," to the thing he loves, that which he most

cares to do.

And here we may find a very subtle and accurate criterion of

*Acts iv. 23. “Being let go, they went to their own company." The word "company" is inserted by our English translators, though it is net printed in italics. The Greek has simply #pòs roùs idious, i.e. “to their own.