The time of life is short: To spend that shortness basely, were too long If life did ride upon a dial’s point, Still ending at the arrival of an hour. Fuller has this quaint instruction upon our present topic: “Lay down such rules to thyself, of observing stated hours for study and business, as no man shall be able to persuade thee to recede from. For when thy resolutions are once known, as no man of ingenuity will disturb thee, so thou wilt find this method will become not only more practicable, but of singular benefit in abundance of things. “He that loseth his morning studies, gives an ill precedent to the afternoon, and makes such a hole in the beginning of the day, that all the winged hours will be in danger of flying out thereat: think how much work is behind; how slow thou hast wrought in thy time that is past; and what a reckoning thou shouldst make, if thy Master should call thee this day to thine account. “There is no man so miserable as he that is at a loss how to spend his time. He is restless in his thoughts, unsteady in his counsels, dissatisfied with the present, solicitous for the future. “Be always employed; thou wilt never be better pleased than when thou hast something to do. For business, by its motion, brings heat and life to the spirits; but idleness corrupts them like standing water. “Make use of time, if thou valuest eternity. Yesterday cannot be recalled; to-morrow cannot be assured; to-day only is thine, which if thou procrastinatest, thou losest; which loss is lost for ever.” Dr. South, in one of his nervous Discourses, speaking of the uncertainty of the present, says: “The sun shines in his full brightness but the very moment before he passes under a cloud. Who knows what a day, what an hour may bring forth? He who builds upon the present, builds upon the narrow compass of a point; and where the foundation is so narrow, the superstructure cannot be high and strong too.” Sir William Jones, the profound scholar, of whom it was said that if he were left naked and friendless on Salisbury-plain he would nevertheless find the road to fame and riches, left among his manuscripts the following lines on the management of his time, which he had written in India, on a small piece of paper: _Sir Edward Coke:_ Six hours in sleep, in law’s great study six; Four spend in prayer—the rest on nature fix. _Rather:_ Seven hours to law, to soothing slumbers seven; Ten to the world allot, and all to heaven.