60 HALF HOURS. 



have conspired together to make women's existence in this world less 

 happy than that of man, it is out duty to become the counseller and 

 protector of the sex, and t exert ourselves to the utmost of our 

 power to render their journey through life as smooth and agree- 

 able as possible. But, alas ! how often instead of this do we, by 

 our unfeeling and reckless conduct towards woman, add immeasur- 

 ably to those woes which Nature, and circumstances over which 

 human agency has no control, ordained as her earthly portion. 



t t 



HALF HOURS. 



f We are indebted for the Series of papers of which this is the commencement to a 

 writer of distinguished reputation. We regret, for the sake of the readers of the 

 Monthly ', that our Contributor wishes in this instance to preserve the anonymous. Ed.] 



A GREAT deal of time is lost in considering and contriving how 

 we shall employ the present half hour that is to say, it seems 

 hardly worth thinking about ; therefore we are very apt to put it to 

 no other use. The illustrious Peer who gave us a specimen of his 

 "Hours of Idleness," has left on record no example concerning Half 

 Hours, save what may be gathered in the way of moral, and by 

 converse, from his later works, some of which plainly indicate that 

 he had no very distinct sense of the fractional value of time. The 

 half hours, the odds and ends of life, are manifestly the most 

 difficult portions to manage, for you never knew a man yet in the 

 habit of saying, "I will be with you in half an hour," or "I will do it 

 in half a minute," who kept to his time. "Take care of your pence, 

 and your pounds will take care of themselves," is a maxim full of 

 wisdom. Hours are round and respectable sums, which we feel and 

 know are not to be neglected with impunity. The laziest man 

 living will not engage in broad day-light, and wide awake, to sit still 

 doing nothing for an hour conscience will not permit him ! The 

 "present hour" is, indeed, according to the moralists, even apt to 

 hold too high a place in our estimation ; but the present half hour, 

 no one has hitherto, I think, taken into due account, nor written very 

 strenuously either for or against, It seems to be considered too 

 insignificant for mighty efforts, too short for completeness the very 

 term is a damper to enterprise ; so we resign ourselves to vague 

 speculations about it, and it slips away before we have made up our 

 minds. Goethe, in his "Wilhelm Meister," recommends that a man 

 should first "make himself acquainted with his own aims, and then 

 fix, and persevere in them ;'' on first reading which, it struck me to 

 be something very odd and pleasant to suppose that any man did not 

 know his own aims, or that this might possibly be a mistranslation of 

 the German sage (whose language I was not acquainted with), 

 having heard that foreign books are sometimes paged into English, 

 dictionary-fashion, without the drudgery of an apprenticeship to 

 grammars and idioms ; but a somewhat painful examination into the 

 history of half hours, as will be explained hereafter, has convinced 

 me that Goethe knew what he said, and that his translator knew 



