Then, again, what are to be our amusements?  By what recreative stimulants shall we irradiate the gloom of our idle hours and vacation periods?  Doubtless there have been many amusements invented by the benefactors of our species—­society, games, music, public entertainments, books; and in a well-chosen round of these, many contrive to pass their time in a tolerable flow of satisfaction.  But they all cost something; they all cost money, either directly, to procure them, or indirectly, to be educated for them.  There are few very cheap pleasures.  Books are not so difficult to obtain, but the enjoying of them in any high degree implies an amount of cultivation that cannot be had cheaply.

Moreover, look at the difficulties that beset the pursuit of amusements.  How fatiguing are they very often!  How hard to distribute the time and the strength between them and our work or our duties!  It needs some art to steer one’s way in the midst of variety of pleasures.  Hence there will always be, in a cautious-minded people, a disposition to remain satisfied with few and safe delights; to assume a sobriety of aims that Helps might call dulness, but that many of us call the middle path.

* * * * *

[Fallacy of prescribing tastes.]

II.  A second error against the limits of the human powers is the prescribing to persons indiscriminately, certain tastes, pursuits, and subjects of interest, on the ground that what is a spring of enjoyment to one or a few may be taken up, as a matter of course, by others with the same relish.  It is, indeed, a part of happiness to have some taste, occupation, or pursuit, adequate to charm and engross us—­a ruling passion, a favourite study.  Accordingly, the victims of dulness and ennui are often advised to betake themselves to something of this potent character.  Kingsley, in his little book on the “Wonders of the Shore,” endeavoured to convert mankind at large into marine naturalists; and, some time ago, there appeared in the newspapers a letter from Carlyle, regretting that he himself had not been indoctrinated into the zoology of our waysides.  I have heard a man out of health, hypochondriac, and idle, recommended to begin botany, geology, or chemistry, as a diversion of his misery.  The idea is plausible and superficial.  An overpowering taste for any subject—­botany, zoology, antiquities, music—­is properly affirmed to be born with a man.  The forces of the brain must from the first incline largely to that one species of impressions, to which must be added years of engrossing pursuit.  We may gaze with envy at the fervour of a botanist over his dried plants, and may wish to take up so fascinating a pursuit:  we may just as easily wish to be Archimedes when he leaped out of the bath; a man cannot re-cast his brain nor re-live his life.  A taste of a high order, founded on natural endowment, formed by education, and strengthened by active devotion,