Keep not standing fix’d and rooted,
Briskly venture, briskly roam!
Hand and heart, where’er thou foot it,
And stout heart are still at home.
In each land the sun does visit
We are gay, whate’er betide;
To give space for wand’ring is it
That the world was made so wide.
Wilhelm Meister: Carlyle.
We know of no more fertile source of crime than Idleness. It is the want of a due impression of the importance and legitimate employment of time, which is one of the main occasions of the luxury and profligacy of one order of society; and it is the same cause which vitiates and defiles the manners of another, and a subordinate rank, in the scale. It is inquired by an ancient poet, who was a keen and accurate observer of human character, why Ægisthus so grievously and wantonly deviated from the path of virtue? and he immediately rejoins the reply, “The cause is obvious,—he was idle!” And it is a circumstance worthy of remark, that when Hogarth wished to give a portrait of a veteran criminal, he made him commence his career as a boy lolling on the tombstones of the churchyard on a Sunday.