MONOTONY Barrack life. "The monotonous don't interest me any longer," said a pretty young woman who waited upon Dr. Bellows and his party at the Schangli, the most commanding prospect of the Bernese Alps, as she witnessed their enthusiasm when the setting sun had set the whole chain into a flame of beauty. She had seen too much of them. “All the world comes here to see these mountains," said an interesting peasant girl at the opening of the valley of Chamouni, "and I wish they would carry Mont Blanc away with them a great snow - bank, spoiling our harvests in autumn, and carrying away our bridges in spring, and killing our husbands and brothers who have to climb it for you strangers, so curious about such a common thing. Everybody wants to come here, and I only want to get away. I am saving all the money I can get to go to Geneva, and perhaps to Paris." The agents of the Hudson Bay Company are described as leading their barrack life by rule, sitting down at stated hours to the same primitive fare, in the company that has become only too familiar. They must have “sucked each other's brains till the exhaustion is complete, and traveled over every inch of their respective minds till of Hazlitt's. they know them as well as the bit of prairie that lies round their stockade. It was the opinion of Hazlitt that in the course An opinion of a long acquaintance we have repeated all our good things, and discussed all our favorite topics several times over, so that our conversation becomes a mockery of social intercourse. We might as well talk Habit may to ourselves. The soil of friendship is worn out with constant use. still attach us to each other, but we feel ourselves fettered by it. Old friends might be compared to old married people without the tie of children. It may seem a hard and worldly thing to say, says the author of The Intellectual Life, but it appears to me that a wise man might limit his intercourse with others before there was any danger of satiety, as it is wisdom in eating Danger of to rise from table with an appetite. Certainly, if the friends of our intellect live near enough for us to anticipate no permanent separation from them by mere distance, if we may expect to meet them frequently, to have many opportunities for a more thorough and searching exploration of their minds, it is a wise policy not to exhaust them all at once. satiety. SLEEP OF Excess of comfort. Agassiz's sloth. Vauvenargues, in one of his Maxims, defines indolence to be the sleep of the mind. You remember the vivid picture of Dickens', describing Gabriel Varden, standing working at his anvil, his face all radiant with exercise and gladness, his sleeves turned up, his wig pushed off his shining forehead - the easiest, freest, happiest man in all the world. Beside him sat a sleek cat, purring and winking in the light, and falling every now and then into an idle doze, as from excess of comfort. You remember also the twenty-fourth stanza of Thomson's Castle of Indolence - the laziest lines in literature: "Waked by the crowd, slow from his bench arose A comely, full-fed porter, swoln with sleep : His calm, broad, thoughtless aspect breathed repose; Ne could himself from ceaseless yawning keep; Through which his half-waked soul would faintly peep: And roused himself as much as rouse himself he can." Agassiz, in his Journey to Brazil, speaks of a sloth on board his vessel on the Amazon, — the most fascinating of all his pets -not for his charms, but for his oddities. “I am never tired," he says, "of watching him, he looks so deliciously lazy. His for rest. into absolute head sunk in his arms, his whole attitude lax and indifferent, he seems to ask only Asked only for rest. If you push him, or if, as often happens, a passer-by gives him a smart tap to arouse him, he lifts his head and drops his arms so slowly, so deliberately, that they hardly seem to move, raises his heavy lids and lets his large eyes rest upon your face for a moment with appealing, hopeless indolence; then the lids fall softly, the head droops, the arms fold heavily about it, and he collapses again into absolute re- Collapsed pose." This mute remonstrance was the repose. nearest approach to activity the naturalist saw him make. Lamb, in his delicious essay On Some of the Old Actors, says of Dodd, that "in expressing slowness of apprehension he surpassed all others. You could see the first dawn of an idea stealing The first slowly over his countenance, climbing up by little and little, with a painful process, till it closed up at last to the fullness of a twilight conception - its highest meridian. He seemed to keep back his intellect, as some have had the power to retard their pulsation. The balloon takes less time in filling, than it took to cover the expansion of his broad moony face over all its quar ters with expression. A glimmer of un dawn of an idea. At a crossroads village. An utter absence of sensation. derstanding would appear in the corner of his eye, and for lack of fuel go out again. A part of his forehead would catch a little intelligence, and be a long time in communicating it to the remainder." One day, at the one store of a cross-roads village, I had convenient means of witnessing a scene which has remained in my memory. It was in summer, and the laziest day of the season. Waiting for a friend, I had ample opportunity to observe an interesting person who sat a few feet from me. He was evidently in perfect health, and perfectly at his ease in his life and possessions. His complexion and figure were proof of unconscious digestion, undisturbed circulation, and absolute repose of nerves. Everything about him, indeed, denoted an utter absence of sensation. He was a farmer, there was no doubt-in full enjoyment of enough of earth's fat acres, and a generous sufficiency of all fat things. There were no burdens or cumbersome improvements on his land, and he was happy in the possession of it. "Wi' sma' to sell, and less to buy, Oh who wad leave this humble state, |