re we can truly take in the whole. We must view it
in every direction, "survey it," as Sterne says, "transversely, then
foreright, then this way, and then that, in all its possible directions
and foreshortenings(13);" and thus only can it be expected that we
should adequately comprehend it.

(13) Tristram Shandy, Vol. IV, Chap. ii.

But the thing it was principally in my purpose to say is, that it is one
of the great desiderata of human life, not to accomplish our purposes
in the briefest time, to consider "life as short, and art as long," and
therefore to master our ends in the smallest number of days or of years,
but rather to consider it as an ample field that is spread before us,
and to examine how it is to be filled with pleasure, with advantage, and
with usefulness. Life is like a lordly garden, which it calls forth all
the skill of the artist to adorn with exhaustless variety and beauty; or
like a spacious park or pleasure-ground, all of whose inequalities
are to be embellished, and whose various capacities of fertilisation,
sublimity or grace, are to be turned to account, so that we may wander
in it for ever, and never be wearied.

We shall perhaps understand this best, if we take up the subject on a
limited scale, and, before we consider life in its assigned period of
seventy years, first confine our attention to the space of a single day.
And we will consider that day, not as it relates to the man who earns
his subsistence by the labour of his hands, or to him who is immersed in
the endless details of commerce. But we will take the case of the man,
the whole of whose day is to be disposed of at his own discretion.

The attention of the curious observer has often been called to the
tediousness of existence, how our time hangs upon our hands, and in
how high estimation the art is held, of giving wings to our hours, and
making them pass rapidly and cheerfully away. And moralists of a
cynical disposition have poured forth many a sorrowful ditty upon the
inconsistency of man, who complains of the shortness of life, at
the same time that he is put to the greatest straits how to give an
agreeable and pleasant occupation to its separate portions. "Let us
hear no more," say these moralists, "of the transitoriness of human
existence, from men to whom life is a burthen, and who are willing to
assign a reward to him that shall suggest to them an occupation or an
amusement untried before."

But this inconsisten