of, if they are taught to shun amusements and the thoughts of
amusement? If any sensuality is left open to them, they will think
of that. If not sensuality, then avarice, or ferocity for "the
cause of God," as they would call it. People who have had nothing
else to amuse them have been very apt to indulge themselves in the
excitement of persecuting their fellow creatures.

Our nation, the northern part of it especially, is given to believe
in the sovereign efficacy of dulness. To be sure, dulness and solid
vice are apt to go hand in hand. But then, according to our
notions, dulness is in itself so good a thing--almost a religion.

Now, if ever a people required to be amused, it is we sad-hearted
Anglo-Saxons. Heavy eaters, hard thinkers, often given up to a
peculiar melancholy of our own, with a climate that for months
together would frown away mirth if it could--many of us with very
gloomy thoughts about our hereafter--if ever there were a people who
should avoid increasing their dulness by all work and no play, we
are that people. "They took their pleasure sadly," says Froissart,
"after their fashion." We need not ask of what nation Froissart was
speaking.

There is a theory which has done singular mischief to the cause of
recreation and of general cultivation. It is that men cannot excel
in more things than one; and that if they can, they had better be
quiet about it. "Avoid music, do not cultivate art, be not known to
excel in any craft but your own," says many a worldly parent,
thereby laying the foundation of a narrow, greedy character, and
destroying means of happiness and of improvement which success, or
even real excellence, in one profession only cannot give. This is,