ngs tend so much to impair a sound literary
perception and to vulgarise the character as the habit of constantly
saturating the mind with inferior literature, even when that literature
is in no degree immoral. Sometimes an opposite evil may be produced.
Excessive fastidiousness greatly limits our enjoyments, and the
inestimable gift of extreme concentration is often dearly bought. The
well-known confession of Darwin that his intense addiction to science
had destroyed his power of enjoying even the noblest imaginative
literature represents a danger to which many men who have achieved much
in the higher and severer forms of scientific thought are subject. Such
men are usually by their original temperament, and become still more by
acquired habit, men of strong, narrow, concentrated natures, whose
thoughts, like a deep and rapid stream confined in a restricted channel,
flow with resistless energy in one direction. It is by the sacrifice of
versatility that they do so much, and the result is amply sufficient to
justify it. But it is a real sacrifice, depriving them of many forms
both of capacity and of enjoyment.

The same pleasures act differently on different characters, especially
on the differences of character that accompany difference of sex. I have
myself no doubt that the movement which in modern times has so widely
opened to women amusements that were once almost wholly reserved for men
has been on the whole a good one. It has produced a higher level of
health, stronger nerves, and less morbid characters, and it has given
keen and innocent enjoyment to many who from their circumstances and
surroundings once found their lives very dreary and insipid. Yet most
good observers will agree that amusements which have no kind of evil
effect on men often in some degree impair the graces or characters of
women, and that it is not quite with impunity that one sex tries to live
the life of the other. Some pleasures, too, exercise a much larger
influence than others on the general habits of life. It is not too much
to say that the invention of the bicycle, bringing with it an immense
increase of outdoor life, of active exercise, and of independent habits,
has revolutionised the course of many lives. Some amusements which may
in themselves be but little valued are wisely cultivated as helping men
to move more easily in different spheres of society, or as providing a
resource for old age. Talleyrand was not wholly wrong in his rep