INDOLENCE THE PARASITIC SOIL. 



39 



both ends of our subject meet. What are the prevailing cha- 

 racteristics of those animate receptacles which we have seen to 

 be chiefly selected by the prying ichneumon for the fatal in- 

 trusion of her eggs ? What but sensuality and inertia ? as 

 exemplified in the crawling devouring caterpillar or the dor- 

 mant chrysalis. And do not these creatures represent exactly 

 the very states, the moral soils, wherein the seeds of vice are 

 usually introduced by the sower of evil ? Thus does the Book 

 of Nature teach us, in living characters, what our books of 

 copy repeat so often, that " Idleness is the root of all evil/' or, 

 in the words of an old moralist, " The broom that sweepeth 

 clean all good thoughts owte of the howse of the mynde, 

 making it fitt to receave the seven devills."* 



* 'Nugse Antiques. ' 



\ 



"VI lir 



in hif. i|rriUm ; lV. ii }'n'i> lo jjuru'. \ta> . 



