I find one book of observations, begun in the year 1646, wherein I have noted many useful things, having the word ETERNITY at the top of many pages, by the thought of which I was quickened to spend my time well. It is a great comfort to me now, in my old age, to find that I was so diligent in my youth;-for in those books I have noted how I spent my time. BISHOP PATRICK, Autobiography. There is no saying shocks me so much as that which I hear very often: - That a man does not know how to pass his time. "Twould have been ill spoken by Methusalem in the nine hundred and sixty-ninth year of his life. . . . But if any man be so unlearned as to want entertainment of the little intervals of accidental solitude which frequently occur in almost all conditions, it is truly a great shame both to his parents and himself. For a very small portion of any ingenious art will stop up all those gaps of our time; either music, or painting, or history, or gardening, or twenty other things, will do it usefully and pleasantly. COWLEY, Of Solitude. Friends, books, a garden, and perhaps his pen, And Nature in her cultivated trim, Dress'd to his taste, inviting him abroad. COWPER, Task, B. III. |