Many if not most of us feel lazy and desultory on Monday morning (which therefore had better be employed on some kind of desultory and irregular work), and we only get ourselves warm in the harness by the middle of the week. We go on working with gradually increasing excitement until Saturday night, when some sensible friend hints that it is too late to make a bad week's work good; precious Sunday comes to ease the strain, and the human machine is oiled and cooled.
Let us be diligent during the week, and lengthen our days by beginning them earlier, so as to do most of our work in the morning; then with a clear conscience we may leave off our play as early as we please and go to rest: we shall enjoy the Sunday repose which we have earned, and find ourselves refreshed instead of wearied by it.
I will conclude this essay in the words of Macaulay—words which he considers among the very best he ever wrote. "Man, man is the great instrument that produces wealth. The natural difference between Campania and Spitzbergen is trifling when compared with the difference between a country inhabited by men full of bodily and mental vigour, and a country inhabited by men sunk in bodily and mental decrepitude. Therefore it is that we are not poorer but richer, because we have, through many ages, rested from our labour one day in seven. That day is not lost. While industry is suspended, while the plough lies in the furrow, while the Exchange is silent, while no smoke ascends from the factory, a process is going on quite as important to the wealth of nations as any process which is performed on more busy days. Man, the machine of machines, the machine compared with which all the contrivances of the Watts and Arkwrights are worthless, is repairing and winding up, so that he returns to his labours on the Monday with clearer intellect, with livelier spirits, with renewed corporal vigour. Never will I believe that what makes a population stronger and healthier and wiser and better can ultimately make it poorer.
"If ever we are forced to yield the foremost place among commercial nations, we shall yield it not to a race of degenerate dwarfs, but to some people pre-eminently vigorous in body and in mind."
THE END.
PRINTED AT THE CAXTON PRESS, BECCLES.