of an exhausting kind, clears the brain and makes it vigorous. Of course it is rather scrappy work; but I lay my plans in the holidays, make my skeleton, and work up my authorities; and so I can go ahead at full steam. But I have strayed away from the subject of habits; and the moral of the above is only that habits are easy enough if you like the task enough. If I did not care for writing, I should find abundance of excellent reasons why I should not do it. Pater says somewhere that forming habits is failure in life; by which I suppose he means that if one gets tied down to a petty routine of one's own, it generally ends in one's becoming petty too--narrow-minded and conventional. I don't suppose he referred to method, because he was one of the most methodical of men. He wrote down sentences that came into his mind, scattered ideas, on small cards; when he had a sufficient store of these, he sorted them and built up his essay out of them. But I am equally aware that habit is apt to become very tyrannical indeed, if it is acquired. In my own case I have got into the habit of writing only between tea and dinner, owing to its being the only time at my disposal, so that I can hardly write at any other time; and that is inconvenient in the holidays. Moreover, I like writing so much, enjoy the shaping of sentences so intensely, that I tend to arrange my day in the holidays entirely with a view to having these particular hours free for writing; and thus for a great part of the year I lose the best and most enjoyable part of the day, the sweet summer evenings, when the tired world grows fragrant and cool. One ought to have a routine for home life certainly; but it is not wholesome when one begins to grudge the slightest variation from the programme. I speak philosophically, because I am in the grip of the evil myself. The reason why I care so little for staying anywhere, and even for travelling, is because it disarranges my plan of the day, and I don't feel certain of being able to secure the time for writing which I love. But this is wrong; it is vivendi perdere causas, and I think we ought resolutely to court a difference of life at intervals, and to learn to bear with equanimity the suspension of one's daily habits. You are certainly wise, if you find it suits you, to secure the morning for writing. Personally my mind is not at its best then; it is dulled and weakened by sleep, and it requires the tonic of routine work and bodily exercise before it expands and flourishes.