INDOLENCE THE PARASITIC SOIL. 



39 



>th ends of our subject meet. What are the prevailing 

 characteristics of those animate receptacles which we have 

 seen to be chiefly selected by the prying ichneumon for the 

 fatal intrusion of her eggs ? What but sensuality and inertia ? 

 as exemplified in the crawling devouring caterpillar or the 

 dormant 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 Antiquse.' 





\ <tsg 



