"Behold the Nereids under the green sea-- Their wavering limbs borne on the wind like stream, Their white arms lifted o'er their streaming hair, With garlands pied and starry sea-flower crowns,-- Hastening to grace their mighty Sister's joy. It is the unpastured sea hungering for calm."] [Note 23: _Whin-pods._ "Whin" is from the Welsh _çwyn_, meaning "weed." Whin is gorse or furze, and the sound Stevenson alludes to is frequently heard in Scotland.] [Note 24: "_Mon coeur est un luth suspendu_." These beautiful words are from the poet Béranger (1780-1857). It is probable that Stevenson found them first not in the original, but in reading the tales of Poe, for the "two lines of French verse" that "haunted" Stevenson are quoted by Poe at the beginning of one of his most famous pieces, _The Fall of the House of Usher_, where, however, the third, and not the first person is used:-- "_Son_ coeur est un luth suspendu; Sitôt qu'on le touche il résonne."] [Note 25: "_Out of the strong came forth sweetness_." Alluding to the riddle propounded by Samson. See the book of _Judges_, Chapter XIV.] II AN APOLOGY FOR IDLERS BOSWELL: "We grow weary when idle." JOHNSON: "That is, sir, because others being busy, we want company; but if we were idle, there would be no growing weary; we should all entertain one another."[1] Just now, when every one is bound, under pain of a decree in absence convicting them of _lèse_-respectability,[2] to enter on some lucrative profession, and labour therein with something not far short of enthusiasm, a cry from the opposite party who are content when they have enough, and like to look on and enjoy in the meanwhile, savours a little of bravado and gasconade.[3] And yet this should not be. Idleness so called, which does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognised in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class, has as good a right to state its position as industry itself. It is admitted that the presence of people who refuse to enter in the great handicap race for sixpenny pieces, is at once an insult and a disenchantment for those who do. A fine fellow (as we see so many) takes his determination, votes for the sixpences, and in the emphatic Americanism, "goes for" them.[4] And while such an one is ploughing distressfully up the road, it is not hard to understand his resentment, when he perceives cool persons in the meadows by the wayside, lying with a handkerchief over their ears and a glass at their elbow. Alexander is touched in a very delicate place by the disregard of Diogenes.[5] Where was the glory of having taken Rome[6] for these tumultuous barbarians, who poured into the Senate house, and found the Fathers sitting silent and unmoved by their success? It is a sore thing to have laboured along and scaled the arduous hilltops, and when all is done, find humanity indifferent to your achievement. Hence physicists condemn the unphysical; financiers have only a superficial