Sir Walter Scott, writing to a friend who had obtained a situation, gave him this excellent practical advice: “You must be aware of stumbling over a propensity, which easily besets you from the habit of not having your time fully employed; I mean what the women very expressively call _dawdling_. Your motto must be _Hoc age_. Do instantly whatever is to be done, and take the hours of recreation after business, and never before it. When a regiment is under march, the rear is often thrown into confusion because the front does not move steadily and without interruption. It is the same thing with business. If that which is first in hand is not instantly, steadily, and readily despatched, other things accumulate behind, till affairs begin to press all at once, and no human brain can stand the confusion. Pray mind this: this is a habit of mind which is very apt to beset men of intellect and talent, especially when their time is not regularly filled up, and left at their own arrangement. But it is like the ivy round the oak, and ends by limiting, if it does not destroy, the power of manly and necessary exertion. I must love a man so well, to whom I offer such a word of advice, that I will not apologise for it, but expect to hear you are become as regular as a Dutch clock,—hours, quarters, minutes, all marked and appropriated. This is a great cast in life, and must be played with all skill and caution.” Coleridge observes: “It would, indeed, be superfluous to attempt a proof of the importance of Method in the business and economy of active or domestic life. From the cotter’s hearth, or the workshop of the artisan, to the palace or the arsenal, the first merit, that which admits neither substitute nor equivalent, is, that _every thing is in its place_. Where this charm is wanting, every other merit loses its name, or becomes an additional ground of accusation and regret. Of one by whom it is eminently possessed, we say proverbially, he is like clockwork. The resemblance extends beyond the point of regularity, and yet falls short of the truth. Both do, indeed, at once divide and announce the silent and otherwise undistinguishable lapse of time. But the man of methodical industry and honourable pursuits does more: he realises its ideal divisions, and gives a character and individuality to its moments. If the idle are described as killing time, he may be justly said to call it into life and moral being, while he makes it the distinct object not only of the consciousness, but of the conscience. He organises the hours, and gives them a soul; and that the very essence of which is to fleet away, and ever more _to have been_, he takes up into his own permanence, and communicates to it the imperishableness of a spiritual nature. Of the good and faithful servant, whose energies, thus directed, are thus methodised, it is less truly affirmed, that he lives in time, and that time lives in him. His days, months, and years, as the stops