reached it we should not have time to main- | studies is the true secret of economy in time. tain it.

connected as possible, but this was for the refreshment of absolute change, not for the economy of time.

To have one main pursuit and several auxilIn modern languages it is not so easy to fix iaries, but none that are not auxiliary, is the limits satisfactorily. You may resolve to true principle of arrangement. Many hard read French or German without either writ-workers have followed pursuits as widely dising or speaking them, and that would be an effectual limit, certainly. But in practice it is found difficult to keep within that boundary if ever you travel or have intercourse with foreigners. And when once you begin to speak, it is so humiliating to speak badly, that a lover of soundness in accomplishment will never rest perfectly satisfied until he speaks like a cultivated native, which nobody ever did except under peculiar family conditions.

Lastly, it is a deplorable waste of time to leave fortresses untaken in our rear. Whatever has to be mastered ought to be mastered so thoroughly that we shall not have to come back to it when we ought to be carrying the war far into the enemy's country. But to study on this sound principle, we require not to be hurried. And this is why, to a sincere student, all external pressure, whether of examiners, or poverty, or business engagements, which causes him to leave work behind him which was not done as it ought to have been done, is so grievously, so intolerably vexatious.

LETTER II.

TO A YOUNG MAN OF GREAT TALENT AND EN-
ERGY WHO HAD MAGNIFICENT PLANS FOR THE
FUTURE.

In music the limits are found more easily. The amateur musician is frequently not inferior in feeling and taste to the more accomplished professional, and by selecting those compositions which require much feeling and taste for their interpretation, but not so much manual skill, he may reach a sufficient success. The art is to choose the very simplest music (provided of course that it is beautiful, which it frequently is), and to avoid all technical difficulties which are not really necessary to the expression of feeling. The amateur ought also to select the easiest instrument, an instrument in which the notes are made for him already, rather than one which Mistaken estimates about time and occasion-The Unknown compels him to fix the notes as he is playing. The violin tempts amateurs who have a deep feeling for music because it renders feeling as no other instrument can render it, but the difficulty of just intonation is almost insuperable unless the whole time is given to that one instrument. It is a fatal error to perform on several different instruments, and an amateur who has done so may find a desirable limitation in restricting himself to one.

Element-Procrastination often time's best preserver-Napoleon's advice to do nothing at all-Use of deliberation and of intervals of leisure-Artistic advantages of calculating time-Prevalent childishness about time-Illusions about reading-Bad economy of reading in languages we have not mastered-That we ought to be thrifty of time, but not avaricious-Time necessary in production-Men who work best under the sense of pressure-Rossini--That these cases prove nothing against time-thrift-The waste of time from miscalculation-People calculate accurately for short spaces, but do not calculate so well for long ones-Reason for this-Stupidity of the Philistines about wasted time-Töpffer and Claude Tillier-Retrospective miscalculations, and the regrets that result from them.

HAVE you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted, than when we read it in the original author? On the same principle, people will give a higher price to a picture-dealer than they would have given to the painter himself. The picture that has been once bought has a recommendation, and the quoted passage is both recommended and isolated from the context.

Much time is saved by following pursuits which help each other. It is a great help to a landscape painter to know the botany of the country he works in, for botany gives the greatest possible distinctness to his memory of all kinds of vegetation. Therefore, if a landscape painter takes to the study of science at all, he would do well to study botany, which would be of use in his painting, rather than chemistry or mathematics, which would be entirely disconnected from it. The memory easily retains the studies which are auxiliary to the chief pursuit. Entomologists remember plants well, the reason being that they find insects in them, just as Leslie the painter had an excellent memory for houses where there were any good pictures to be found. "Time and occasion are the two important The secret of order and proportion in our circumstances in human life, as regards which

Trusting to this well-known principle, although I am aware that you have read everything that Sir Arthur Helps has published, I proceed to make the following quotation from one of his wisest books.

the most mistaken estimates are made. And | Very frequently I have escaped it, but more the error is universal. It besets even the by good luck than good management. Somemost studious and philosophic men. This times I have tumbled into it, and when this may notably be seen in the present day, when many most distinguished men have laid down projects for literature and philosophy, to be accomplished by them in their own lifetime, which would require several men and many lifetimes to complete; and, generally speaking, if any person, who has passed the meridian of life, looks back upon his career, he will probably own that his greatest errors have arisen from his not having made sufficient allowance for the length of time which his various schemes required for their fulfilment."

There are many traditional maxims about time which insist upon its brevity, upon the necessity of using it whilst it is there, upon the impossibility of recovering what is lost; but the practical effect of these maxims upon conduct can scarcely be said to answer to their undeniable importance. The truth is, that although they tell us to economize our time, they cannot, in the nature of things, instruct us as to the methods by which it is to be economized. Human life is so extremely various and complicated, whilst it tends every day to still greater variety and complication, that all maxims of a general nature require a far higher degree of intelligence in their application to individual cases than it ever cost originally to invent them. Any person gifted with ordinary common sense can perceive that life is short, that time flies, that we ought to make good use of the present; but it needs the union of much experience, with the most consummate wisdom, to know exactly what ought to be done and what ought to be left undone-the latter being frequently by far the more important of the

misfortune occurred it has not unfrequently been in consequence of having acted upon the advice of some very knowing and experienced person indeed. We have all read, when we were boys, Captain Marryat's "Midshipman Easy." There is a passage in that story which may serve as an illustration of what is constantly happening in actual life. The boats of the Harpy were ordered to board one of the enemy's vessels; young Easy was in command of one of these boats, and as they had to wait he began to fish. After they had received the order to advance, he delayed a little to catch his fish, and this delay not only saved him from being sunk by the enemy's broadside, but enabled him to board the Frenchman. Here the pitfall was avoided by idling away a minute of time on an occasion when minutes were like hours; yet it was mere luck, not wisdom, which led to the good result. There was a sad railway accident on one of the continental lines last autumn; a notable personage would have been in the train if he had arrived in time for it, but his miscalculation saved him. In matters where there is no risk of the loss of life, but only of the waste of a portion of it in unprofitable employment, it frequently happens that procrastination, which is reputed to be the thief of time, becomes its best preserver. Suppose that you undertake an enterprise, but defer the execution of it from day to day: it is quite possible that in the interval some fact may accidentally come to your knowledge which would cause a great modification of your plan, or even its complete abandonment. Every thinking person is well aware that the enormous loss of time caused by the friction of our legislative machinery has preAmongst the favorable influences of my served the country from a great deal of crude early life was the kindness of a venerable and ill-digested legislation. Even Napoleon country gentleman, who had seen a great the Great who had a rapidity of conception deal of the world and passed many years, be- and of action so far surpassing that of other fore he inherited his estates, in the practice kings and commanders that it seems to us alof a laborious profession. I remember a the- most supernatural, said that when you did ory of his, that experience was much less not quite know what ought to be done it was valuable than is generally supposed, because, best to do nothing at all. One of the most except in matters of simple routine, the prob- distinguished of living painters said exactly lems that present themselves to us for solu- the same thing with reference to the practice tion are nearly always dangerous from the of his art, and added that very little time presence of some unknown element. The un- would be needed for the actual execution of a known element he regarded as a hidden pit- picture if only the artist knew beforehand fall, and he warned me that in my progress how and where to lay the color. It so often through life I might always expect to tumble happens that mere activity is a waste of time, into it. This saying of his has been so often that people who have a morbid habit of being confirmed since then, that I now count upon busy are often terrible time-wasters, whilst, the pitfall quite as a matter of certainty. on the contrary, those who are judiciously de

two.

liberate, and allow themselves intervals of | accomplished nothing. "What! have you leisure, see the way before them in those in-done only that?" they say, or we know by tervals, and save time by the accuracy of their looks that they are thinking it. their calculations.

tice, indulged in wonderful illusions about reading, and collected several thousand volumes, all fine editions, but he died without having cut their leaves. I like the university habit of making reading a business, and estimating the mastery of a few authors as a just title to consideration for scholarship. I should like very well to be shut up in a garden for a whole summer with no literature but the “Faëry Queene," and one year I very nearly realized that project, but publishers and the postman interfered with it. After all, this business of reading ought to be less illusory than most others, for printers divide books into pages, which they number, so that, with a moderate skill in arithmetic, one ought to be able to foresee the limits of his possibilities. There is another observation which may be suggested, and that is to take note of the time required for reading different languages. We read very slowly when the language is imperfectly mastered, and we need the dictionary, whereas in the native tongue we see the whole page almost at a glance, as if it were a picture. People whose time for reading is limited ought not to waste it in grammars and dictionaries, but to confine themselves resolutely to a couple of languages, or three at the very utmost, notwithstanding the contempt of polyglots, who estimate your learning by the variety of your tongues. It is a fearful throwing away of time, from the literary point of view, to begin more languages than you can master or retain, and to be always puzzling

The most illusory of all the work that we A largely intelligent thrift of time is neces-propose to ourselves is reading. It seems so sary to all great works-and many works are easy to read, that we intend, in the indefinite very great indeed relatively to the energies future, to master the vastest literatures. We of a single individual, which pass unper- cannot bring ourselves to admit that the liceived in the tumult of the world. The ad-brary we have collected is in great part closed vantages of calculating time are artistic as to us simply by want of time. A dear friend well as economical. I think that, in this of mine, who was a solicitor with a large pracrespect, magnificent as are the cathedrals which the Gothic builders have left us, they committed an artistic error in the very immensity of their plans. They do not appear to have reflected that from the continual changes of fashion in architecture, incongruous work would be sure to intrude itself before their gigantic projects could be realized by the generations that were to succeed them. For a work of that kind to possess artistic unity, it ought to be completely realized within the space of forty years. How great is the charm of those perfect edifices which, like the Sainte Chapelle, are the realization of one sublime idea? And those changes in national thought which have made the old cathedrals a jumble of incongruous styles, have their parallel in the life of every individual workman. We change from year to year, and any work which occupies us for very long will be wanting in unity of manner. Men are apt enough of themselves to fall into the most astonishing delusions about the opportunities which time affords, but they are even more deluded by the talk of the people about them. When children hear that a new carriage has been ordered of the builder, they expect to see it driven up to the door in a fortnight, with the paint quite dry on the panels. All people are children in this respect, except the workman, who knows the endless details of production; and the workman himself, notwithstanding the lessons of experience, makes light of the future task. What gigantic plans we scheme, and how lit-yourself about irregular verbs. tle we advance in the labor of a day! Three All plans for sparing time in intellectual pages of the book (to be half erased to-mor-matters ought, however, to proceed upon the row), a bit of drapery in the picture that will principle of thrift, and not upon the principrobably have to be done over again, the im- ple of avarice. The object of the thrifty perceptible removal of an ounce of marble- man in money matters is so to lay out his dust from the statue that seems as if it never money as to get the best possible result from would be finished; so much from dawn to his expenditure; the object of the avaricious twilight has been the accomplishment of the man is to spend no more money than he can golden hours. If there is one lesson which help. An artist who taught me painting often experience teaches, surely it is this, to make repeated a piece of advice which is valuable plans that are strictly limited, and to arrange in other things than art, and which I try to our work in a practicable way within the remember whenever patience fails. He used limits that we must accept. Others expect to say to me, "Give it time." The mere length 80 much from us that it seems as if we had of time that we bestow upon our work is in

I have quoted the best instance known to me of this voluntary seeking after pressure, but striking as it is, even this instance does not weaken what I said before. For observe, that although Rossini deferred the

itself a most important element of success, |agers had shut me up by force with nothing and if I object to the use of languages that we but a dish of maccaroni, and the threat that I only half know, it is not because it takes us a should not leave the place alive until I had long time to get through a chapter, but be- written the last note. I wrote the overture cause we are compelled to think about syntax to the 'Gazza Ladra' on the day of the first and conjugations which did not in the least performance, in the upper loft of the La occupy the mind of the author, when we Scala, where I had been confined by the manought rather to be thinking about those things ager, under the guard of four scene-shifters which did occupy his mind, about the events who had orders to throw my text out of the which he narrated, or the characters that he window bit by bit to copyists, who were waitimagined or described. There are, in truth, ing below to transcribe it. In default of only two ways of impressing anything on the music I was to be thrown out myself." memory, either intensity or duration. If you saw a man struck down by an assassin, you would remember the occurrence all your life; but to remember with equal vividness a picture of the assassination, you would probably be obliged to spend a month or two in copying composition of his overture till the evening it. The subjects of our studies rarely produce before the first performance, he knew very an intensity of emotion sufficient to ensure well that he could do it thoroughly in the perfect recollection without the expenditure time. He was like a clever schoolboy who of time. And when your object is not to knows that he can learn his lesson in the learn, but to produce, it is well to bear in mind quarter of an hour before the class begins; or that everything requires a certain definite he was like an orator who knows that he can time-outlay, which cannot be reduced without deliver a passage and compose at the same an inevitable injury to quality. A most ex- time the one which is to follow, so that he perienced artist, a man of the very rarest ex-prefers to arrange his speech in the presence ecutive ability, wrote to me the other day of his audience. Since Rossini always alabout a set of designs I had suggested. "If lowed himself all the time that was necessary I could but get the TIME," the large capitals for what he had to do, it is clear that he did are his own,-"for, somehow or other, let a not sin against the great time-necessity. The design be never so studiously simple in the express which can travel from London to masses, it will fill itself as it goes on, like the Edinburgh in a night may leave the English weasel in the fable who got into the meal-tub; metropolis on Saturday evening although it and when the pleasure begins in attempting is due in Scotland on Sunday, and still act tone and mystery and intricacy, away go the with the strictest consideration about time. hours at a gallop.” A well-known and very The blameable error lies in miscalculation, successful English dramatist wrote to me: and not in rapidity of performance. “When I am hurried, and have undertaken Nothing wastes time like miscalculation. It more work than I can execute in the time at negatives all results. It is the parent of inmy disposal, I am always perfectly paralyzed." completeness, the great author of the UnfinThere is another side to this subject which ished and the Unserviceable. Almost every deserves attention. Some men work best un-intellectual man has laid out great masses of der the sense of pressure. Simple compres- time on five or six different branches of knowlsion evolves heat from iron, so that there is edge which are not of the least use to him, a flash of fire when a ball hits the side of an simply because he has not carried them far ironclad. The same law seems to hold good enough, and could not carry them far enough in the intellectual life of man, whenever he in the time he had to give. Yet this might have needs the stimulus of extraordinary excite- been ascertained at the beginning by the simment. Rossini positively advised a young plest arithmetical calculation. The experience composer never to write his overture until of students in all departments of knowledge the evening before the first performance. has quite definitely ascertained the amount of "Nothing," he said, "excites inspiration like time that is necessary for success in them, and necessity; the presence of a copyist waiting the successful student can at once inform the for your work, and the view of a manager in aspirant how far he is likely to travel along despair tearing out his hair by handfuls. In the road. What is the use, to anybody, of Italy in my time all the managers were bald having just enough skill to feel vexed with at thirty. I composed the overture to 'Oth-himself that he has no more, and yet angry at ello' in a small room in the Barbaja Palace, other people for not admiring the little that he where the baldest and most ferocious of man- possesses?

I wish to direct your attention to a cause which more than any other produces disappointment in ordinary intellectual pursuits. It is this. People can often calculate with the utmost accuracy what they can accomplish in ten minutes or even in ten hours, and yet the very same persons will make the most absurd miscalculations about what they can accomplish in ten years. There is of course a reason for this: if there were not, so many sensible people would not suffer from the delusion. The reason is, that owing to the habits of human life there is a certain elasticity in large spaces of time that include nights, and meal times, and holidays. We fancy that we shall be able, by working harder than we have been accustomed to work, and by stealing hours from all the different kinds of rest and amusement, to accomplish far more in the ten years that are to come than we have ever actually accomplished in the same space. And to a certain extent this may be very true. No doubt a man whose mind has become seriously aware of the vast importance of economizing his time will economize it better than he did in the days before the new conviction came to him. No doubt, after skill in our work has been confirmed, we shall perform it with increased speed. But the elasticity of time is rather that of leather than that of india-rubber. There is certainly a degree of elasticity, but the degree is strictly limited. The true master of time-thrift would be no more liable to illusion about years than about hours, and would act as prudently when working for remote results as for near ones.

whilst Claude Tillier went even farther, and boldly affirmed that "le temps le mieux employé est celui que l'on perd.”

Let us not think too contemptuously of the miscalculators of time, since not one of us is exempt from their folly. We have all made miscalculations, or more frequently have simply omitted calculation altogether, preferring childish illusion to a manly examination of realities; and afterwards as life advances another illusion steals over us not less vain than the early one, but bitter as that was sweet. We now begin to reproach ourselves with all the opportunities that have been neglected, and now our folly is to imagine that we might have done impossible wonders if we had only exercised a little resolution. We might have been thorough classical scholars, and spoken all the great modern languages, and written immortal books, and made a colossal fortune. Miscalculations again, and these the most imbecile of all; for the youth who forgets to reason in the glow of happiness and hope, is wiser than the man who overestimates what was once possible that he may embitter the days which remain to him.

LETTER III.

TO A MAN OF BUSINESS WHO DESIRED TO MAKE
HIMSELF BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH LITERA-
TURE, BUT WHOSE TIME FOR READING WAS
LIMITED.

Victor Jacquemont on the intellectual labors of the Germans
-Business may be set off as the equivalent to one of their
pursuits-Necessity for regularity in the economy of time
-What may be done in two hours a day-Evils of inter-
ruption-Florence Nightingale-Real nature of interrup-
tion--Instance from the Apology of Socrates.

Not that we ought to work as if we were always under severe pressure. Little books are occasionally published in which we are told that it is a sin to lose a minute. From the intellectual point of view this doctrine is simply In the charming and precious letters of stupid. What the Philistines call wasted Victor Jacquemont, a man whose life was time is often rich in the most varied experience dedicated to culture, and who not only lived to the intelligent. If all that we have learned for it, but died for it, there is a passage about in idle moments could be suddenly expelled the intellectual labors of Germans, which from our minds by some chemical process, it takes due account of the expenditure of time. is probable that they would be worth very lit- "Comme j'étais étonné," he says, "de la tle afterwards. What, after such a process, prodigieuse variété et de l'étendue de connaiswould have remained to Shakespeare, Scott, sances des Allemands, je demandai un jour à Cervantes, Thackeray, Dickens, Hogarth, l'un de mes amis, Saxon de naissance et l'un Goldsmith, Molière? When these great stu- des premiers géologues de l'Europe, comment dents of human nature were learning most, ses compatriotes s'y prenaient pour savoir the sort of people who write the foolish little tant de choses. Voici sa réponse, à peu près: books just alluded to would have wanted to Un Allemand (moi excepté qui suis le plus send them home to the dictionary or the paresseux des hommes) se lève de bonne heure, desk. Töpffer and Claude Tillier, both men of été et hiver, à cinq heures environ. Il tradelicate and observant genius, attached the vaille quatre heures avant le déjeuner, fumant greatest importance to hours of idleness. quelquefois pendant tout ce temps, sans que Töpffer said that a year of downright loitering cela nuise à son application. Son déjeuner was a desirable element in a liberal education; dure une demi-heure, et il reste, après, une