I

HAVE by no means gathered into my handful all or nearly all the possible poppies that dot the sober corn of life. But I remember that I came out only to gather a handful; and not with the intention of stripping the field. And it seems to be about time that the handful was tied up. Here they are, then, the gay flowers: some big and some smaller: some widespread and others hardly smoothed out from their crumpling in the green case of the bud: some with a centre of jet, and some with scarce any set off to their gay scarlet; some standing up pert and saucy, and some pulling sideways, with tears of rain upon their bent heads: various, but all of the poppy family, and gathered into one vivid bunch. Ah, may be they were better, scattered here and there among other growth; and a certain sameness in the colour may be wearisome to the eye; besides, who would care to set a handful of poppies in the vase in her room? Poor flowers! they have their appropriate place on the dry summer-bank, and just studding the corn-ranks here and there; but you smile at the innocence that would offer them to you as a nosegay. A bunch of snowdrops, primroses, or violets-this would be well; a bunch of lilies or choicest roses, even better, some might think. But a bunch of flaunting useless poppies:-of course you take them, rather than hurt the kind meaning that gathered them for you;-but, once fairly out of sight of the wellintentioned giver, you do not care to carry them far: you cast them slyly over that hedgerow: there they may lie and wither quickly in the glare, or slowly in the shade. Let who will pick them up. At any rate you think no more of them.

Yet some might care to pick them up, and put them in water, if per

VOL. XVII.-NO. CI.

haps their limp languor may revive into crisp life again. Some, who are out of the way of fields where poppies grow: some, whose lot is cast amid row after row, for miles, of brick or plaster houses, and acres of baking pavement: some, thus circumstanced, might, had they the chance, even pick up your slighted posy, and make much of it, and cherish it as a precious thing.

Even thus, let me be bold to hope, this slight ephemeral record of glad hours that now and then studded the more sedate growth of life, may find a welcome here and there, where glad hours are now scarce and few and far between, and dull days of monotonous work the scarcely broken rule of life. A bunch of poppies, with now and then an ear of corn plucked together with the scarlet flower that grew so close to it that one was unconsciously gathered with the other: a gay posy, with here and there, as a relief, the sober green of a graver thought serving as a useful foil to the blaze and laugh of colour. And if, in this last of the handful, if in this tying up the bunch, I should of choice rather select the quiet tints than the gay,-why, you know that dark evergreen ivy and cool fern-fronds come in well at the last to make a frame out of which the vivid hues may burn.

But in truth I am not now going to seek for any particular specimens of recreative enjoyment. I am rather about to take the whole genus, generally; and converse about that.

There is something to be said about the word itself, Recreation, something suggestive in the consideration of its etymology. For from this we get the best definition of what the thing itself is. And in truth this is a matter not really so well and universally understood as

2 G

at first thought it might appear to be. Come, let me ask the reader-How would you explain the word? What would be your definition of Recreation? I will show presently why I think that, practically, at least, there are many who would give, or rather, who do give, a wrong and incorrect answer to the question, 'What is Recreation?'

We have, I repeat, the meaning of the word given in its very etymology. As Relaxation plainly tells of the 'nec semper arcum tendit Apollo,'-the letting a strung mind free from strain and tension; so Recreation is the restoring of that part of our being which is constantly being ground away by the ceaseless wear and tear of life. Strength and energy, tone and spi it, these are renewed and restored to us by a healthful and enjoyable change of employment. We are then, in a measure, recreated; we start fresh in the business of life, with a replenished balanco at our banker's.

A healthful and enjoyable change of employment: thus I would define recreation. And therefore I can hardly include sleep in my definition. And yet how we are indeed recreated in sleep!

The innocent sleep;

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care, The death of each day's life; sore labour's bith; Balm of hurt minds; great Nature's second course;

Chief nourisher in life's feast.'

And another poet calls it, as probably we all know,

Tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep! Indeed which of us but will endorse the opinion as to the delightfulness, after a day of weary brain and body work, of nestling down into the inviting bed, and closing the tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes,' waiting then, just a brief conscious while, for that refreshing balm to settle upon them. For thorough enjoyment of this, you must have retired in good time at night, and be able thus to look forward to a tract of fair broad hours of sleep. You miss the satisfaction of the feeling, however you are still more appreciative of the delightsomeness

of bed, if you have crawled into it at two or three in the morning, after your task of writing (necessary to be sent off on the morrow) is wearily completed. For you feel that you have, until seven o'clock, only a meagre four hours' space for indulgence of fatigue which eight would scarcely rectify. So you are like the man who comes in from a walk furiously hungry, and has perforce to content him with one very small mutton-chop. He keenly appreciates it, no doubt; but he knows, at the outset, that it will but whet his appetite for more. But, with a long night before you, you cuddle under the clothes, and hug the conscious delight of feeling uncon sciousness gathering over you:

Of all the thoughts of God that are
Borne inward unto souls afar,
Along the Psalmist's music deep,
Now tell me if that any is

For gift or grace surpassing this-
"He giveth His beloved sleep?**

Nevertheless this restoring power will not fall in with my present idea of recreation. Still, while we were considering the etymology of the word, we could hardly altogether exclude this process of winding us up when we totter, and casting us, fresh and steady, spinning back into Life's ring on the morrow.

You see, I describe Recreation as being a healthful and enjoyable change of employment. For idleness is not recreation. All work and no play,' it is pretty generally held, at least in theory, result in any thing but the brightness of the intellect submitted to the process. But here, and elsewhere, the thing is, to find the mean between extremes. For all play and no work lead neither to usefulness nor to happiness in the experience of those who try this recipe, wearied with tho other. Far more wearisome than hard work does the utter absence of work soon become. Look at the languid, bored, boneless state into which some of the Dundreary class are brought by the disastrous condition of not being compelled to do that honest manly work which they have not stamina enough in them to do of free choice, and without compul

sion. Oh! the talk of killing time,' and of not knowing what to do'— what would not some men, with the purpose of manhood in them, give for a few of those hours frittered, not set out to interest, hours of contemptible fretting inaction, that might have been devoted to happy, manly work! Tell not me that mauhood is latent in these simpering pseudo-idiots; and that occasion can call out a spark from which, forsooth, they shall, with an air deprecatory of having once been betrayed into manliness, sink back into their smouldering life of unreality, artificiality, affectation again; -tell me not this as a palliative. That they have good stuff in them, and take a pride and pleasure in graduating in the school of insipidity and unreality, is, to my mind, more to their condemnation than to their praise. 'I write unto you, young men, because ye are strong;' -thus spoke a brave, loving man's heart some centuries ago. Ah! if that were the ground of his writing, he might have been spared the labour of an epistle now.

Honest and thorough work: you cannot change your employment pleasurably if you have no employment at all: you cannot recreate mind and body if neither have wear and tear; or if the very so called recreation is the chief wear and tear they have. And that this is so, sometimes, will be presently shown. I like to see a MAN earnest in whatever he is about. I like to see him go about his work in a thorough way: and I like to see him really eager, sincere, about his play. Not masking the honest interest which he ought to feel in anything that is worth the doing: not going about with a languid simpering pretence of being dragged into an exertion, whereas he would rather be lolling and lounging about, a carefully-rendered and near imitation of the idiot-this being, it would appear, indeed, the ideal of his imitation. Excited, alert, I would have him; rather too much in earnest about the employment of the moment than not enough in earnest about it; flushed cheeks, hair tossed off the brow, as he eagerly argues about (even such

a trifle as) this stroke in croquet, or this ephemeral question of the day. I would rather he kept his temper, on every ground. I think no game can possibly be worth the loss of good humour. But, of the two, I own to a preference for honest excess of vehemence, over what, at least at first, is an insincere and assumed over-apathy. I hate the folly of a man who has carefully boned himself into a limp, inane, characterless neither-man-nor-woman. The lisp,

the stare, the eye-glass, the drawl: -Oh, to do him the kindness of taking him by the coat-collar and shaking him into reality, into naturalness, for but one brief half hour!

If you are in an idiot asylum you know what to expect. But, in society, to see young fellows with capacities of energy and strength taking absolute pains to appear as though born fools: this is, I own, aggravating to me to the last degree. I wish some one of those of whom I am thinking may happen upon this page, and set himself to use for one half-hour the faculties he is surrendering, and ask himself whether he thinks he is making life, this brief, probationary life, that noble thing which his inmost heart must be aware it is, or might become. And let him cast about for some honest employment in which a man may heartily put out the powers with which God has nobly endowed him. Oh, there is work to be done, in this world, for us all, if we will look for it, or even wait for it, with an honest view towards it. It is a noble sight to see a young fellow putting out the strength which God has given him, towards some worthy end. It is a pitiable sight to see him using his energies in the effort to become unenergetic, using his wit in the endeavour to appear a fool, using his strength in emulating helplessness and weakness.

You must, therefore, if you would know the meaning of recreation, know also the meaning of work. You must earn before you spend. Recreation must not be the business, but the leisure of life. It must be the poppy merely amid the corn. We cannot have recreation without some exhaustion. We must have

lost something by friction, before we can require to be recreated at all.

So we quite dismiss the absence of earnest employment from our idea of Recreation. Doing nothing is the hardest of hard work: and under such a regimen the muscles and the brain become flaccid and flabby, the temper touchy and irritable, and the whole man altogether unhinged. It is said that, to insure his goods against future depredations, a pastrycook will sometimes give unlimited license to the boy whom he has taken into his shop: a day or two will sicken him. So with an active minded man doomed or privileged to be idle. After being left for a whole year with nothing to do, I fancy he would find recreation in a good turn on the treadmill.

Often has it been noticed, in books and in real life too, how natural a mistake, but also how great mistake is that of the busy man, who through a life of close over-work, looks forward to the time when he may give up business, and retire upon a period of unlimited leisure. But I have touched on this before. It is unnecessary to repeat again how complete is his mistake, and how, unwillingly it may be, and by compelled degrees, he discovers that it is too late for him to form new tastes, to seek new employment. That doing nothing is, to the energetic mind, no rest at all, far less recreation; and that that to which he had looked forward all his life as the goal towards which his work tended, was, in reality, far more wearying than even those years of incessant overwork had been.

But graver mistakes than that just noticed are committed through the not rightly understanding this truth: that not absence of occupation, but congenial, continual, enjoyed occupation, is that which is our real recreation after toil. And so, in the secret hearts of many who have been imperfectly or mistakenly instructed, or not instructed at all, maybe, an acknowledged distaste is latent with regard to the prospect of that truest deepest recreation; that recreation in the fullest and most profound sense of the word

which lies (for those who labour faithfully) at the end of this life which tires us all out so. An endless inactivity; this is more or less the idea; all men's varied energies and powers of thought, and myriad branchings of action, merged in the ceaseless and unbroken singing of hymns! Really this idea, more or less hazy, is one lurking, I believe, scarce detected or sifted, in the minds of many people. Can we wonder that the idea of Heaven, thus represented, becomes a dreary, an uninviting thought, to the eager mind of the young, full as this is of life, activity, and work? But a little thought would detect the mistake. Our actions shall praise our Maker, not our voices only, all our other powers being left to stagnate. It is true that Eternity shall be the singing of His praises; but the song shall come, not from our lips only, but from our lives. So the brook sings as it rushes forth to water the valley, but is silent if it lies stagnant in the pool. So the stars praise Him in their ordered courses; so day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge; and though there is neither speech nor language, yet their voice is universally heard.

Well, as I said just now must sometimes be the case, I could not help picking this ear of corn; it grew so close to a poppy.

Properly to understand the true object of recreation would greatly assist in guiding us to a wise selection in our search for it. You can make a blaze, no doubt, by putting the end of a candle, or a drench of paraffin on the sinking fire. what it really wanted was fresh fuel. The enlivening process to which you resorted was an illusory one. The sudden blaze soon dies down, and behold! the fire has sunk lower than before.

But

Now I would show by this illustration, that many of the amusements of Society are not recreation. They are, in short, the serious work of life with many. The round of balls, parties, theatres: the gay life of Society,'-there may be at first an excitement about it which makes