furniture, so I bought a cartload of deals; took a carpenter (who came to
me for parish relief) called Jack Robinson, with a face like a full moon,
into my service, established him in a barn, and said, 'Jack, furnish my
house.' You see the result."

Then what shall I say of the luxury of endless daily papers, leading
articles, short paragraphs, reviews, illustrated papers,--are not these
luxuries? Are they not inventions for making thought easy, or rather for
the purpose of relieving us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves.
May I also, without raising a religious controversy, observe that in
religious worship we are prone to relieve ourselves from the trouble of
deep and consecutive thought by surrounding our minds with a sort of mist
of feeling and sentiment; by providing beautiful music, pictures, and
ornaments, and so resting satisfied in a somewhat indolent feeling of
goodness, and not troubling ourselves with too much effort of reason. A
love of the beautiful undoubtedly tends to elevate and refine the mind,
but the follies of the false love and the dangers of an inordinate love
are numerous and deadly. It is absurd that a man should either be or
pretend to be absolutely absorbed in the worship of a dado or a China tea
cup so as to care for nothing else, and to be unable to do anything else
but stare at it with his head on one side. With most people the whole
thing is the mere affectation of affected people, who, if they were not
affected in one way, would be so in another. Boswell was a very affected
man. He says, "I remember it distressed me to think of going into
another world where Shakespeare's poetry did not exist; but a lady
relieved me by saying, 'The first thing you will meet in the other world
will be an elegant copy of Shakespeare's works presented to you.'"
Boswell says he felt much comforted, but I suspect the lady was laughing
at him. I like the "elegant copy" very much. It is certain that in this
world there is a deal of rough work to be done, and I feel that,