of sunset;  as surely as the old worn-out moon
is followed by a bright bran-new one; so surely
is to-day's, this week's, this month's number
succeeded by to-morrow's, next week's, next
month's; while the Quarterlies come out in their
variously tinted covers as inevitably as summer
pushes spring overboard, and winter treads on
autumn's heels. If you wish to realise how
quickly time flies, put your name to a bill, or
look at the periodicals accumulated on your
book-shelves.

The same thoughtless feeling, or the same
ignorance, exists on the other side of the
Channel, as in England. Hard-working French
citizens have little sympathy with the labours
of artists and literary men—whom they
consider as an idle race. The idea, of course, is
based on a misconception. With many folks,
head-work does not pass for work, but merely
for amusement. Turning a wheel, carrying a
load, that indeed is really work. But to sit
down in front of a quire of paper, and to write
on it "all that comes into your head," is just
the pastime of a person with nothing to do. It
is equivalent to cards, backgammon, and
amatory epistolary correspondence. George
Stephenson going to bed in broad daylight, to solve
in his head complicated engineering problems,
and Rossini dashing off his operas in a similar
recumbent position, would be alike included in
the category of sluggards taking their ease in
the Castle of Indolence. There are people who
cannot understand that writing should be paid
for; on the contrary, they think the writer should
pay for the pleasure of seeing himself in print.
The legends respecting Scribe, for instance,
the great French dramatic author, received by
the small Parisian bourgeoisie, would be amusing
to collect and put on record. In the first place,
many believed that he caused to be performed,
in his own proper name, all the dramatic
manuscripts that were left at his door. As to the
handsome fortune he acquired, some persist in
attributing its origin to gambling at the Bourse,
or to speculations in land. "It is not by
play-writing," observed a respectable shopkeeper,
"that a man can earn three or four million
francs; for if he could, everybody else would do
the same."

But if people who earn their bread, or increase
their income, by literature and its sister arts,
do not work, at least they suffer from the effects
of work, as is proved in Tissot's excellent essay,
De la Santé des Gens de Lettres. For he
holds that the arrangement of a picture, or the
composition of a grand piece of music, requires
as strong a mental effort as the pursuit of the
most abstract studies.

Their diseases, he says, have two principal
causes: assiduous labour of the mind, and
continual repose of the body. He quotes our
English Adventurer, to the effect that "the
multitude, who live by bodily labour, imagine
that study does not fatigue. They are under a
mistake. Thinking is work which fatigues no
less than the artisan's or the labourer's toil,
without having its advantages. The latter
gives health, strength, cheerfulness, sound sleep,
and a good appetite; whereas a studious and
sedentary life produces exactly the contrary
effects."

While thought goes on, the brain is in action.
But every bodily organ, set in action, tires at
last; and if the action be too long continued,
its functions become deranged. When the
mind, by protracted intellectual exercise, has
impressed too energetic an action upon the
brain, it is no longer mistress of its movements,
and loses the power of stopping it. The
persons who are the soonest put out of health by
mental exertion, are those who are incessantly
occupied with one single subject; only one
portion of the sensorium is strained, and that
is always in a state of tension. Over-exertion
of the brain, moreover, causes a determination
of blood to the head. I refrain from frightening
the reader with a list of the diseases which
are the result of leading a sedentary life.
Overactivity of mind, combined with inactivity of
body, is the cause of not a small proportion of
the evils which learned, literary, and artistic
flesh are heirs to.

"It is picking up money in the street,"
remarked a person who was present when I
received a cheque for contributions to a
periodical.

"Is it?" I said; "then try to pick up a
little yourself in the same way."

"I haven't the time. I have other things to
attend to. It is not in my line. You have got
into the way of it. You are on the editor's
or the publisher's good books," and so on, are
the usual rejoinders to the above reply; and a
slight disillusion is frequently felt when the
aspirant, hitherto a reader, thinks of writing.
The manuscripts that have been shown for my
opinion! Luckily, not multitudinous in number,
but wonderful in quality. With neither
head, tail, nor middle. Editors see more of
those curiosities in a month than any isolated
literary man can in a year. In vol. vii. of
Household Words, page 145, is an article
headed " H. W.," describing some of the
machinery by which that journal was produced,
and also a few of its correspondents'
eccentricities. No doubt, in the dozen years which
have since elapsed, such a stratum of oddities
and absurdities must have been showered
upon the conductors, that, if allowed to remain
in situ, it would be thick enough to bury them
out of sight.

When I have ventured to observe to intending
contributors, "It is not usual to send in articles
written in old copy-books between the round-text,
nor on both sides of the paper, nor with
all those manifest blunders, nor marked with
blots, grease-spots, and the circular bottoms of
pewter pint-pots—"

"It was a coffee-cup did that."

"Well, a coffee-cup. I don't say it wasn't.
But suppose you first carefully look your paper
through, correct every fault you discover,
remedy the tautology and the mistakes in
spelling, and then copy it out fairly and neatly,