ough a good allowance of sleep is absolutely necessary for
imaginative brain work, long holidays are not so. I have noticed that
those who let their brains 'lie fallow,' as it is termed, for any
considerable time, are by no means the better for it; but, on the other
hand, some daily recreation, by which a genuine interest is excited and
maintained, is almost indispensable. It is no use to 'take up a book,'
and far less to attempt 'to refresh the machine,' as poor Sir Walter
did, by trying another kind of composition; what is needed is an
altogether new object for the intellectual energies, by which, though
they are stimulated, they shall not be strained.

Advice such as I have ventured to offer may seem 'to the general' of
small importance, but to those I am especially addressing it is worthy
of their attention, if only as the result of a personal experience
unusually prolonged; and I have nothing unfortunately but advice to
offer. To the question addressed to me with such _naivete_ by so many
correspondents, 'How do you make your plots?' (as if they were
consulting the Cook's Oracle), I can return no answer. I don't know,
myself; they are sometimes suggested by what I hear or read, but more
commonly they suggest themselves unsought.

I once heard two popular story-tellers, A who writes seldom, but with
much ingenuity of construction, and B who is very prolific in pictures
of everyday life, discoursing on this subject.

'Your fecundity,' said A, 'astounds me; I can't think where you get your
plots from.'

'Plots?' replied B; 'oh! I don't trouble myself about _them_. To tell
you the truth, I generally take a bit of one of yours, which is amply
sufficient for my purpose.'

This was very wrong of B; and it is needless to say I do not quote his
system for imitation. A man should tell his own story without
plagiarism. As to Truth being stranger than Fiction, that is all
nonsense; it is a proverb set about by Nature to conceal her own want of
originality. I am not like that pessimist philosopher who assumed her
malignity from the fact of the obliquity of the ecliptic; but the truth
is, Nature is a pirate. She has not hesitated to plagiarise from even so
humble an individual as myself. Years after I had placed my wicked
baronet in his living tomb, she starved to death a hunter in Mexico
under precisely similar circumstances; and so late as last month she has
done the same in a forest in Styria. Nay, on my having found occ