Yet there is a great deal of family love amongst us. “I am not at all sure that the majority of the human race have not been ugly, and even among those "lords of their kind," the British, squat figures, ill-shapen nostrils, and dingy complexions are not startling exceptions. He knew nothing of weekday services, and thought none the worse of the Sunday sermon if it allowed him to sleep from the text to the blessing liking the afternoon service best, because the prayers were the shortest, and not ashamed to say so for he had an easy, jolly conscience, broad-backed like himself, and able to carry a great deal of beer or port-wine, not being made squeamish by doubts and qualms and lofty aspirations.” He lived chiefly in the country, among pleasant seats and homesteads, and was fond of sauntering by the fruit-tree wall and scenting the apricots when they were warmed by the morning sunshine, or of sheltering himself under the orchard boughs at noon, when the summer pears were falling.
He was a contemplative, rather stout gentleman, of excellent digestion of quiet perceptions, undiseased by hypothesis happy in his inability to know the causes of things, preferring the things themselves. He only read one newspaper, innocent of leaders, and was free from that periodicity of sensations which we call post-time.
Old Leisure was quite a different personage. Even idleness is eager now-eager for amusement prone to excursion-trains, art museums, periodical literature, and exciting novels prone even to scientific theorizing and cursory peeps through microscopes. Do not believe them: it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in. “Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind.
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