fail.

An indirect advantage, but a very considerable one, attendant upon
various modes of recreation, is, that they provide opportunities of
excelling in something to boys and men who are dull in things which
form the staple of education. A boy cannot see much difference
between the nominative and the genitive cases--still less any
occasion for aorists--but he is a good hand at some game or other;
and he keeps up his self-respect, and the respect of others for him,
upon his prowess in that game. He is better and happier on that
account. And it is well, too, that the little world around him
should know that excellence is not all of one form.

There are no details about recreation in this essay, the object here
being mainly to show the worth of recreation, and to defend it
against objections from the over-busy and the over-strict. The
sense of the beautiful, the desire for comprehending Nature, the
love of personal skill and prowess, are not things implanted in men
merely to be absorbed in producing and distributing the objects of
our most obvious animal wants. If civilisation required this,
civilisation would be a failure. Still less should we fancy that we
are serving the cause of godliness when we are discouraging
recreation. Let us be hearty in our pleasures, as in our work, and
not think that the gracious Being Who has made us so open-hearted to
delight, looks with dissatisfaction at our enjoyment, as a hard
taskmaster might, who in the glee of his slaves could see only a
hindrance to their profitable working. And with reference to our
individual cultivation, we may remember that we are not here to
promote incalculable quantities of law, physic, or manufactured
goods, but to become men--not narrow pedants, but wide-seeing, mind-