New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1869-07-15
SIMMER KEADING.

Our good friends, the publishers, huNeItlse u
great variety Of books which they aver lin
three-line type) are specially conceived and
constructed for reading by the sea-shore or
upon the mOuntain-tops, or wherever the
tourist may unfold his tent. Among these we
notice variety, which is equally the spice Of
life and of Libraries. There are trcatises of
theology, of science, Of art; fresh works upon
the dear, delightful mathematics common
place books containing most of the poetry
which has been sung about the ocean; guide
books for the Adlrondacks; fresh editions Of
Humes History, and of Mr.. Thackeray's
Vanity Fair y the complete works OF Sir
Walter Scott, for seven dollars aud thirty
seven and q half cents tho very latest
cantharides book Of Miss Braddon,
and twelve or fifteen new rOmanccs
said to be translated from the French. 1t
might, however, be just as well understood
first as last, that tho Book of Nature is now
the most seasonable volume. Trying brains
must rest. The spray at Newport and Long
Branch should wash us clean from the learned
dust of Libraries. For q man to climb Mt.
Washington expressly to read Buffers Anal
"ogyn on the top of it, would be the tip-top
Of absurdity. AS a general rule, when we hold
communion Immediately with Lady Nature,
we had better leave tresome descriptions of
her beauty at home. A man will get from her
only what he carries in his head and heart
and eyes. To rise up at midnight to enjoy the
poem of the respectable DR.. Young, would be
to initiate the absurdity of the actor who
blackened all over to play "Othello"
Indeed, it is we'll to remember that brains,
like fields, are sometimes all the better for
lying fallow little. There is great deal of
morality in pure laziness, especially for the
OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES Yankee. The busiest,
hardest life is none the worse sometimes for
lapsing into the idleness Of genteel comedy.
1t is well now and then to abandon ones
self to dreaming and dawdling; to getting up
late, and to going to bed when fortune peasos J
to rambles nowhere in search Of nothing TO q
comfortable indifference and thus, drifting
with the stream to get our daily mental bread put
into our mental mouth without so much as
the trouble of giving thanks for it. There is a
great deal of pleasure in being feeble, as all
who have sempiternally ailing friends can
testify. In some sort, the thermometer has q
way of making invalids of us all. 1t Is quite
unnecessary to talk about latitude; If we are
to have the climate of India, why shouldn't
we all be Little Henries with our BeaversP
Mrs Boflin observes of certain old lady,
that she is "a thinking steam ingein;" and
this is just what nobody should be from now
until the cool, delicious mornings and evenings
of October. If the reader has tough problem
unsolved, he had better postpone its further
consideration until just little fire is comfort
able. Consider the lilies Of the field, how they
neither toll nor spin nor think, but simply are
content with growing and with surprising in
raiment the dandifed King Solomon. The
Paradise Of contemplatiye inertia is field with
forty COWS in it, at high noon in hot July
day, when the milky mothers, forty Of them,
are Illuminating like one. We who have dominion
over the COWS, have reason enough to take
lesson of laziness from them. The American
morality is in keeping still. The hight Of
Columbia's self-sacrifice is just to do nothing
at all. IF we can only cOntrive during the dog
days to live upon the traditions of the soul, it
will 10 all the better for us. There is a time