o take care of his health and his spirits; he has been a great deal
in the open air, which is the most salutary of all things for both
body and mind; and if he has never read the great Book in very
recondite places, he has dipped into it and skimmed it over to
excellent purpose. Might not the student afford some Hebrew roots, and
the business man some of his half-crowns, for a share of the idler's
knowledge of life at large, and Art of Living? Nay, and the idler has
another and more important quality than these. I mean his wisdom. He
who has much looked on at the childish satisfaction of other people in
their hobbies, will regard his own with only a very ironical
indulgence. He will not be heard among the dogmatists. He will have a
great and cool allowance for all sorts of people and opinions. If he
finds no out-of-the-way truths, he will identify himself with no very
burning falsehood. His way took him along a by-road, not much
frequented, but very even and pleasant, which is called Commonplace
Lane, and leads to the Belvedere of Commonsense.[16] Thence he shall
command an agreeable, if no very noble prospect; and while others
behold the East and West, the Devil and the Sunrise, he will be
contentedly aware of a sort of morning hour upon all sublunary things,
with an army of shadows running speedily and in many different
directions into the great daylight of Eternity. The shadows and the
generations, the shrill doctors and the plangent wars,[17] go by into
ultimate silence and emptiness; but underneath all this, a man may
see, out of the Belvedere windows, much green and peaceful landscape;
many firelit parlours; good people laughing, drinking, and making love
as they did before the Flood or the French Revolution; and the old
shepherd[18] telling his tale under the hawthorn.

Extreme _busyness_, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a
symptom of deficient vitality; and a faculty for idleness implies a
catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity. There is a
sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people about, who are scarcely conscious
of living except in the exercise of some conventional occupation.
Bring these fellows into the country, or set them aboard ship, and you
will see how they pine for their desk or their study. They have no
curiosity; they cannot give themselves over to random provocations;
they do not take pleasure in the exercise of their faculties for its
own sake; and unless Necessity lay