IYMAYITMIYIMIYI

Self-denial in Eating.

of all sorts, with any kind of overfatigue. Fifty things may excuse us in the eye of charity; climate, anxiety, troublesome tasks, past or to come, bodily or mental exhaustion, from whatever cause; nay, the cheerfulness of our return to one's friends or family. But melancholy, above all, claims a particular tenderness. It is a hard thing when a man has been in trouble all the morning, and sees nothing but trouble, perhaps, before him in the afternoon, to deny him the pleasure of tickling his palate a little. The loss of a very little satisfaction is sometimes a great loss in this world; the difficulty of foregoing it is in proportion. Let the abstaining from a particular dish, or the getting up from dinner without a full stomach, be respected accordingly. I confess that I had more difficulty in leaving off butter and cheese (which happen to disagree with my temperament) than in volunteering some actions, which the world would have thought less easy. The satisfaction of having one's way, or of doing what we can to have it, and venting one's feelings on account of what we think just and honorable, is a mighty and reasonable help to one's virtue. The pinch comes when our virtue is at war with our tendencies; when we hold to it through pain and anxiety, and when we doubt whether we shall be as well or ill thought of for acting up to our consciences.

Again and again, therefore, I say, let justice be done to selfdenial in matters of beef and port, and above all, I say, let those consider also the necessity of the self-denial, who would fain lighten the gathering shadows of age or middle life, and retain as much health and good temper as they can for themselves and others. They have no alternative between a great deal of it and exercise. The more they exercise, the more they may indulge; for there is a business in all things; and citizens must earn their dinners, as well as the money to purchase them, if they would not have those other creditors come upon them, spleen and gout. I do not say that they require nothing to give them a fillip. Quite the contrary. I only say that sedentary eating and drinking is not the best; that the good effects

IMIVIAISIAISIAI

Reaping the Whirlwind.

of it are not lasting, and the bad ones very much so; and that however difficult it may be for a pleasant fellow to deny himself "t' other plateful" as well as "t' other glass," deny it he must, or his comfort some day will be grievously denied to him. He may rub his hands at the sight of his dishes, he may crow over his wine, he may throw sayings (as he willingly would the plates) at the heads of the moral and the musty; but as surely as he sits there, gay and contemptuous, so surely will he find the "black ox's foot" come upon his toes under the table, not to be lightened, to any real purpose, by all the effects of champagne. Age is always supposed to bring melancholy along with it. I do not believe it. I believe that many a temperate old man, who has nevertheless indulged a reasonable appetite, is as cheerful as the majority of young ones. But age will have shadows with a vengeance if it has been intemperate; and middle life will be plunged in them before its time. Purple faces and a jovial corpulence may impose upon the spectator; but the sick gentleman within knows what his tenement consists of. A fool may, indeed, go to his grave pretty comfortably; a mere animal, a human prize ox, may swell and abuse his system for a long time, because he has no intellect to be hurt by it, and to hurt him in turn; but good sense in the head, and a perpetual contradiction of it in the stomach, will never do in the long run. The head ought to rule; the stomach will revenge its bad government by sending up its angry ambassadors of megrims and vapors; and the anxiety and irritability of the ruler will in time revenge itself on the stomach.

Would you be free from melancholy, a strong and cheerful man, an old man free from the clouds and peevishness of old age? Bathe, exercise, and be temperate, that you may throw off ill humors at the pores, and

Some

have your soul incrusted with sordidness of the Hygienic Hints. body. As much, perhaps, ought to be said

about bathing as about exercise. There is a story of a Scotch

IIYAKHAKI

woman, who attempted to drown herself in a fit of melancholy. She was taken out of the water in a doubtful state, and underwent an active rubbing, according to the process of the Humane Society. She not only returned to life, but recovered her health and spirits; the physicians pronouncing, that twenty to one her melancholy was entirely due to her dirt. There is the same reaction in this respect as in the other. Melancholy people are apt to grow careless of their persons; people who are careless of their persons grow melancholy. But cleanliness is the first of the virtues; not the first in rank, but the first in necessity. The most selfish people can practise it for their own sakes; the rest ought to practise it for themselves and others. With With regard to exercise, judge between the two following extremes: A foxhunter can get drunk every night in the year, and yet live to an old age; but then he is all exercise and no thought. A sedentary scholar is not able to get drunk once in a year with impunity; but then he is all thought and no exercise. Now the great object is neither to get drunk, nor to be all exercise, nor to be all thought; but to enjoy all our pleasures with a sprightly reason. The four ordinary secrets of health are, early rising, exercise, personal cleanliness, and the rising from table with a stomach unoppressed. There may be sorrows in spite of these; but they will be less with them; and nobody can be truly comfortable without.

The Blue Pill.

There is a great rascal going about town (a traveller to boot in foreign countries, particularly in the East and in the South) who does a world of mischief, under the guise of helping you to a digestion. I am loath to mention him; his very name is beneath the dignity and grace of my Platonic philosophy. But I must. He talks much about the liver. Sometimes he calls himself the Blue Pill, sometimes one thing, sometimes another. He is particularly fond of being denominated "the most innocent thing in the world." Let the sufferer beware of him. He may turn his company to advantage a few times, provided, and only provided, he does not anticipate his acquaintance, or let him

BABYHAYIAHAHH

divert him from his better remedies. Wherever he threatens to become a habit, let the patient take to his heels. Nothing but exercise can save him.

He is only surfeit in disguise; a perpetual tempter to repletion, under the guise of preventing the consequences. The excess is tempted, and the consequences are not prevented; for, at the least, one ill is planted in the constitution instead of another. Disguise the scoundrel as we may, he is only, in a small shape, what an emetic was to Vitellius, or a bath of mud to the drunken barbarian. Sometimes, with an unblushing foresight and intention, he is even taken before dinner! Imagination escapes from the thought of an abuse so gross.

THE WISHING CAP PAPERS.

KYMAIYIMYMIYIYI

HUXLEY.

Evolution in the Whole Universe.

So far as that limited revelation of the nature of things, which we call scientific knowledge, has yet gone, it tends, with constantly increasing emphasis, to the belief that, not merely the world of plants, but that of animals; not merely living things, but the whole fabric of the earth; not merely our planet, but the whole solar system; not merely our star and its satellites, but the millions of similar bodies which bear witness to the order which pervades boundless space, and has endured through boundless time; are all working out their predestined courses of evolution.

The State of Nature.

It may be safely assumed that, two thousand years ago, before Cæsar set foot in Southern Britain, the whole countryside visible from the windows of the room in which I write was in what is called "the state of nature." Except, it may be, by raising a few sepulchral mounds, such as those which still, here and there, break the flowing contours of the downs, man's hands had made no mark upon it; and the thin veil of vegetation which overspread the broad-backed heights and the shelving sides of the coombs was unaffected by his industry.

The native grasses and weeds, the scattered patches of gorse, contended with one another for the possession of the scanty surface soil; they fought against the droughts of summer, the frosts of winter and the furious gales which swept, with unbroken force, now from the Atlantic, and now from the North Sea, at all times of the year; they filled up, as they best might, the gaps made in their ranks by all sorts of underground and overground animal ravagers. One year with another, an average population, the floating balance of the unceasing struggle for existence among the indigenous plants, maintained itself. It is