the earth, before the last has soaked in; and the excess does but run away in waste. You would see more clearly, remember better, do more in quality and quantity too; if you would work for less time and give some hours per day to real, honest, recreation. Perhaps a good row, two hour's practice at Cowley, a hard ride, a turn at racquets, or something of this athletic description will be the best. For in these you must loose your hold of that problem, those dates, that scheme of philosophy, and so your head will be swept and dusted. Besides, the body will have its fair share in education; and the better the laboratory the better will work the Alchemist within. But, if you will make walking your recreation, open your brain to the fresh air and influences around, as you opened the window of your hot room when you left it. Take in that.

"-Blessing in the air,

Which seems a sense of joy to yield

To the bare trees, and mountains bare,
And grass in the green field."

Watch those noisy rooks, bending and swaying to break the twigs, in the tops of the tall elms, for their nest. Commune with the deer through those gratings in Magdalene walk; I have oft my. self found much benefit accrue from their society. Watch

"The budding twigs spread out their fan,

To catch the breezy air."

Look for the first primrose; watch that sticky chestnut bud, held like a lamp over the water, unfold its crumpled, ravishing emerald. Notice the black ashbuds swelling, after the limes and elms are already" in a midst of green." Regard, when other trees have been for sometime clad, that grove of oaks feeling the reviving impulse, and standing in a dawn of colour.

"Some very red, and some a glad light green."

as Chaucer most exquisitely expresses their hue.

In a word, rest from your work, let your mind be interested and amused, and your body put into a wholesome glow; get back half an hour before dinner; chat with a friend for an hour after; and, on the whole, (besides the work you do being good solid stuff, not diluted wash,) you will actually have gained more in positive amount than had you tied that poor brain down till it lost the use of its wings.

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The same applies to all hard workers. Even needle women would find it pay, I think, to lay aside the weary seam and gusset and band," the buttons and the thread, and get into fields for one hour a day, if possible; into the green of a park, since no one hour would enable her

"-to breathe the breath

Of the cowslip and primrose sweet,
With the sky above her head,

And the grass beneath her feet."

I think she would have done as much at the week's end, and have

done it better, and that with less dealing of death to her every feeling of life.

I wish that the heads in merchant and other offices would see this truth more than they do. Some are better than others, no doubt. But it is a poor economy that grudges an occasional holiday to the clerk in their employ; that does not rather urge him to take it; that would shut his all of recreation into two or three weeks of the whole year. Depend upon it, more thorough, and even more work, would come out of machines more cared for, and worked less recklessly. There would be greater will to work, and, where the will already was existing, there would be more physical power.

The Saturday half holiday is, in truth, a wise as well as a humane institution. I like, too, that cheerful face placarded about London, with requests that you would not shop after seven o'clock. Why should you ? Put yourself behind the counter, hour after hour, day after day, month after month, year after year, and you will soon know why you should not.

Sunday can hardly be called a Day of Recreation, though indeed in the highest sense it is so. The week takes much out of the body of the hard labouring man, much out of the mind of the mental labourer. And do the souls require no breathing time, amid the dust and jostle of this work-a-day world? Shall the week be all worldly work, and the Sunday all worldly play? What an education for the Hereafter! No, men should have time in the week for recreation of the body, and Sunday should be as much as possible the soul's day. Not a day of gloom and confinement, me genoito: that would not re-create the flagged soul: but a day of quiet worship of God; in His House at the appointed times; and among His works,in the tranquil walk, on the seat in the garden, or on the violet bank above the stream; during other parts of the day; and in the family, in cheerful though not flippant conversation, round the winter fire, or after the summer evening's ramble. Or let the piano or grand organ sound, and the home choir gather about it; while the father joins in from his easy chair; let sweet chants and angelic hymns make peace in the heart, and sweetly and fitly close the hours of the Day of Rest.

This, however, by the way; for our talk is more of the recruiting of the needs of mind and body, than of freeing the world-cramped pinions of the soul.

This, then, we may gather, that it will pay better in the long run not to light your candle at both ends. The light itself will be steadier, if less flaring; and certainly it will be given four times as long. And, on the whole, that a mean between all work and no play, and all play and no work, is that which it is desirable to attain.

We have seen, too, what recreation is, both as to its etymology and as to its essence; yea, the former of these seemed the best explanation of the latter. One word yet remains, as to the proper aim and object of recreation. And this will lead me to speak of a book, the favorite of everybody, and which I myself heartily admire.

A more genial kindly book than the " Recreations of a Country Parson," one more full of every-day wisdom, exquisitely expressed, I would hardly ask for an after-dinner companion; that bit which describes the return of the Parson, leaving his wife and children at the sea side, to his Cure, from which he has been absent three Sundays; the lonely feeling, which gradually wears off; the kindly shining of the horse's back at the Station, the drive home, with its Parish talk: the pleased servants, the somewhat anxious look for letters on the study table, the trim room, and bright fire, then the sally into the garden, the poking about the stables, patting the horse, looking at the cow, glancing at the pig; at last the glowing lamp, and the drawn curtains, and the tranquil evening, with a thankful heart; what a downright gem is this bit of writing! Many pages in that volume are recreations to more country Parsons than him who wrote them; as this one can testify.

And yet there is a point on which I must needs a little differ from this unknown, yet, to me, positive friend. And partly with a view to this ungrateful act, did I put the title of this essay, in the form in which it stands. The Country Parson would have it, that Recreation is the end of work. Now I submit that work is the end of Recreation. I mean, I do not agree with him that, Recreation being the object to set before the mind, work is then the necessary way in which we must get to that goal; since idleness and recreation are not even akin. Work he seems to speak of as desirable, because it makes us enjoy leisure, and recreation and rest.”

Now I would rather put it, that recreation is good because it fits us for thorough work, making that very honest and hearty work in itself an enjoyable thing. True, work is not an end in itself, but it has its own proper and individual pleasure. Not at all times, but where health is ours, and recreation has wound us up for labour. The rest that remaineth is surely not absence of work, but rest from weariness, from that jading, depressing, wearing element superadded to work by sin; and I would submit that the well doing of the work appointed for us both here and hereafter, shall be our object; and recreation (if needed then or indeed differing from work), desirable because fitting us and bracing us for this end. Asceticism I never advocate; yet doth the Country Parson, I sometimes think, pitch life in rather too easy a key. Self denial, as an end, would be purposeless, unmeaning. But this is a world too full of solemn sin and sadness; our own lives, if watched, are too depressing, too disappointing, for us to feel any right to cultivate unlimited "jollyness," for "jollity" would not express the writer's meaning. And few Parsons, unless with Parishes very small, could give their afternoon to gardening, (that most delicious of recreations for the Country Parson); or a constitutional; their evenings in music and light reading; withal not having even thought, in winter time, of rising at seven. Nor can I hold but that a Sermon, any serious occupation, is the worse for being undertaken in a desultory way; that you may spring from your train of thought at an offending weed in the

path, or suffer the like breaks to occur. The desultory habit is, I know, hard sometimes to keep under: but I deny that you ought deliberately to indulge and to cultivate it. In fine, if you are content to take a very minor sphere of work, and to settle down in that, you may take life pretty easy. But to fit yourself for great things, for an important place in the building, (and there is ONE who hath bid us set before us no less aim than Perfection ;) there must be downright, steady, several-hours-together, work; late at night, too, or better, early in the morning. We may repose in the valley, but it will not be without the sweat pouring from the brow, that we climb high on that ascent which slopes upwards towards GOD.

I would not be mistaken here. Graver thoughts that Country Parson hath; and graver work, too, we are sure, than these delicious Essays reveal to us. He hints as much, in the Essays themselves; and indeed the wisdom and the beauty of them would assure us of this, without such hinting. I only mean that his way of" putting things" might, and I think would, lead many to exalt recreation above honest work; to regard the former as the thing to desire, and the latter as, at best, a necessary evil. To regard life, in short, as too easy a kind of business; to undervalue self denial, (which is the gymnastics of the soul, fitting it for struggles and contests that shall come ;) to think too much that we may cast the reins on the horses' backs, and jog on at our ease. Truth is dearer than a friend; and if I have here detected an oversight, or a less considered statement on his part, my unknown friend would himself thank me for my friendly act.

I am exceeding the limits that I had proposed to myself. I must stay the rapid race of the ready quill, and lay it aside to recruit the somewhat flaccidity of its nib. To end. Recreation must, then, be had, but it is not the chief object of life; it should recreate, after work done, and for work to come. Hear Jeremy Taylor: "Let not your recreations be lavish spenders of your time; but choose such which are healthful, short, transient, recreative, and apt to refresh you: but at no hand dwell upon them, or make them your great employment; for he that spends his time in sports, and calls it recreation, is like him whose garment is all made of fringes, and his meat nothing but sauces; they are healthless, chargeable, and useless." "It is lawful to relax and unbend our bow, but not to suffer it to be unready or unstrung."

And every one should be careful that his recreation be, in the first place, perfectly innocent, and fraught with harm, either direct or indirect, to none; next, that it be not mere trifling and childish folly, but a service of God, if not in itself, yet at any rate by fitting us for the directly serving Him. This, rightly regarded, is not to sadden but to ennoble life. Is it not a glorious thing that not only our work, but our recreation, may, for its ultimate goal, propose to itself the glory of GOD? Therefore there must be a fitness and a dignity even in the unbending of our lighter hours; and wise Jeremy's

advice to the scholar is one that all may lay to heart for its beauty and wisdom.

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Spend not your time in that which profits not; for your labour and your health, your time and your studies are very valuable: and it is a thousand pities to see a diligent and a hopeful person spend himself in gathering cockleshells and little pebbles, in telling sands upon the shores, and making garlands of useless daisies."

V. I. R.

KING ALFRED:

How he fought with the Danes, and how he
ruled his people.

The departure of the Roman power, withdrawn from Britain in the exigency of the falling fortunes of the Empire, left the British people, while becoming every year less able to defend themselves, exposed to the harassing inroads of the Celtic tribes who dwelt in the northern part of the Island. Terrified and powerless, the inhabitants of South Britain, or what we now call England, besought the aid of their neighbours over the water-the Jutes and the Angles.

As might have been expected, the help thus obtained quickly became conquest over the feeble people who were unable to save their land from either foe. Pict and Scot indeed were driven back to the fastnesses of their own rugged mountain-land, but South Britain fell under the yoke of the Angle, the Jute, and the Dane. With the dominion of the old inhabitants of the country, their religion well-nigh passed away too. The Christianity which had been so early planted in Britain was forcibly driven out by the inroads of these pagan hordes; and though in the remote districts of the west and south-west, Christian faith and worship still lingered, in spite of persecution, the great mass of the dwellers in the land were heathen.

But the re-kindling of the lamp was at hand. We owe it to the pious zeal of Gregory the Great that England was re-christianized. The Mission of Augustine and the baptism of Ethelbert, King of Kent, events which render the close of the sixth century for ever to be remembered with the deepest thankfulness by us, opened the way for the spread of the Gospel through Saxon England. In about a