er social condition of Italy, when the ordinary
occupations of rural life were considered compatible with the highest
civic dignity, Pliny speaks of the triumphant generals and their men,
returning contentedly to the plough. In those days the lands were tilled
by the hands even of generals, the soil exulting beneath a ploughshare
crowned with laurels, and guided by a husbandman graced with triumphs:
"IPSORUM TUNC MANIBUS IMPERATORUM COLEBANTUR AGRI: UT FAS EST CREDERE,
GAUDENTE TERRA VOMERE LAUREATO ET TRIUMPHALI ARATORE." [131] It was only
after slaves became extensively employed in all departments of industry
that labour came to be regarded as dishonourable and servile. And so
soon as indolence and luxury became the characteristics of the ruling
classes of Rome, the downfall of the empire, sooner or later, was
inevitable.

There is, perhaps, no tendency of our nature that has to be more
carefully guarded against than indolence. When Mr. Gurney asked an
intelligent foreigner who had travelled over the greater part of the
world, whether he had observed any one quality which, more than another,
could be regarded as a universal characteristic of our species, his
answer was, in broken English, "Me tink dat all men LOVE LAZY." It is
characteristic of the savage as of the despot. It is natural to men to
endeavour to enjoy the products of labour without its toils. Indeed,
so universal is this desire, that James Mill has argued that it was
to prevent its indulgence at the expense of society at large, that the
expedient of Government was originally invented. [132]

Indolence is equally degrading to individuals as to nations. Sloth never
made its mark in the world, and never will. Sloth never climbed a hill,
nor overcame a difficulty that it could avoid. Indolence always failed
in life, and always will. It is in the nature of things that it
should not succeed in anything. It is a burden, an incumbrance, and a
nuisance--always useless, complaining, melancholy, and miserable.

Burton, in his quaint and curious, book--the only one, Johnson says,
that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to
rise--describes the causes of Melancholy as hingeing mainly on Idleness.
"Idleness," he says, "is the bane of body and mind, the nurse of
naughtiness, the chief mother of all mischief, one of the seven deadly
sins, the devil's cushion, his pillow and chief reposal.... An idle dog
will be mangy; and how shall an idle person e