You have learned many things, my friend, but one thing you have _not_ learned--the art of resting. That stone in Glen Croe ought to have impressed its lesson on the mind of many a traveller, long before Earl Russell gave it a newspaper celebrity. Have we not rested there together, you and I, a little in advance of the coach, which the weary horses were still slowly dragging up the tedious hill? And as we sat on the turf, and looked down the misty glen, did we not read the lesson there engraven? How good and _human_ the idea was, the idea of setting up that graven stone in the wilderness; how full of sympathy is that inscription for all the weakness and weariness of humanity! Once, in the ardor of youth, there shone before me a golden star in heaven, and on the deep azure around it "_Ohne Hast, ohne Rast_," in letters of steady flame; but now I see more frequently a plain little stone set up in the earth, with the inscription, "Rest, and be thankful!" Is not the stone just a little like a grave-stone, my friend? Perhaps it is. But if we take rest when we require it during life, we shall not need the grave's rest quite so soon. LETTER VII. TO AN ARDENT FRIEND WHO TOOK NO REST. The regret for lost time often a needless one--Tillier's doctrine about _flânerie_--How much is gained in idle hours--Sainte-Beuve's conviction that whatever he did he studied the infinite book of the world and of life--Harness--Free play of the mind necessary--The freedom of a grain of desert-sand--The freedom of the wild bee. If we asked any intellectual workman what he would do if his life were to be lived over again, I believe the answer, whatever its form, would amount ultimately to this: "I would economize my time better." Very likely if the opportunity were granted him he would do nothing of the sort; very likely he would waste his time in ways more authorized by custom, yet waste it just as extravagantly as he had done after his own original fashion; but it always seems to us as if we could use the time better if we had it over again.