Scott himself was most anxious to impress upon the minds of his own children the importance of industry as a means of usefulness and happiness in the world.

To his son Charles, when at school, he wrote:--"I cannot too much impress upon your mind that LABOUR is the condition which God has imposed on us in every station of life; there is nothing worth having that can be had without it, from the bread which the peasant wins with the sweat of his brow, to the sports by which the rich man must get rid of his ENNUI....

As for knowledge, it can no more be planted in the human mind without labour than a field of wheat can be produced without the previous use of the plough.

There is, indeed, this great difference, that chance or circumstances may so cause it that another shall reap what the farmer sows; but no man can be deprived, whether by accident or misfortune, of the fruits of his own studies; and the liberal and extended acquisitions of knowledge which he makes are all for his own use.

Labour, therefore, my dear boy, and improve the time.