_Junkets_. Pieces of cheese or something of the kind. _By friar's lantern_ = Jack o' Lantern or Will o' the Wisp. _In weeds of peace_ = the dress worn in time of peace. _Hymen_. God of wedlock. _Jonson_. (See previous note to _Ben Jonson_.) _Sock_. The shoe worn on the ancient stage by comedians as the buskin was by tragedians. _Lydian airs_. Soft and soothing, as opposed to the Dorian airs, which expressed the rough and harsh element in ancient music.] * * * * * THE PLEASURES OF A LIFE OF LABOUR. I wish to show you how possible it is to enjoy much happiness in very mean employments. Cowper tells us that labour, though the primal curse, "has been softened into mercy;" and I think that, even had he not done so, I would have found out the fact for myself. It was twenty years last February since I set out a little before sunrise to make my first acquaintance with a life of labour and restraint, and I have rarely had a heavier heart than on that morning. I was but a thin, loose-jointed boy at the time--fond of the pretty intangibilities of romance, and of dreaming when broad awake; and, woful change! I was now going to work at what Burns has instanced in his "Twa Dogs" as one of the most disagreeable of all employments--to work in a quarry. Bating the passing uneasiness occasioned by a few gloomy anticipations, the portion of my life which had already gone by had been happy beyond the common lot. I had been a wanderer among rocks and wood--a reader of curious books when I could get them--a gleaner of old traditionary stories; and now I was going to exchange all my day-dreams, and all my amusements, for the kind of life in which men toil every day that they may be enabled to eat, and eat every day that they may be enabled to toil!