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VI.

Success in the Attainment of Health.

"Health and strength

Are both in thine own keeping, life and death.
Morally right is physically best:

Thou mayest poison all the springs of health,
Abridge life's lease, and die before thy time;
Or lengthen out thy threescore years and ten
By peaceful joy and temperate exercise."

R. MAINWARING said very quaintly:-
"Health is that which makes your food and
drink both savoury and pleasant, else Nature's

injunction of eating and drinking were a hard task and slavish custom. Health is that which makes your bed easy and your sleep refreshing; that revives your strength with the rising sun, and makes you cheerful at the light of another day. 'Tis that which fills up the hollow and uneven places of your carcass, and makes your body plump and comely. 'Tis that which dresseth you up in Nature's richest attire, and adorns your face with her choicest colours. 'Tis that which makes exercise a sport, and walking abroad the enjoyment of your liberty. 'Tis that which makes fertile and increaseth the natural endowments of your mind, and preserves them long from decay, makes your wit acute and your

memory retentive. 'Tis that which supports the fragility of a corruptible body, and preserves the verdure, vigour, and beauty of youth. 'Tis that which makes the soul take delight in her mansion, sporting herself at the casement of your eyes. "Tis that which makes pleasure to be pleasure, and delights delightful, without which you can solace yourself in nothing of terrene felicities or enjoyments.

"But now take a view of yourself when Health has turned its back upon you, and deserts your company; see then how the scene is changed, how you are robbed and spoiled of all your comforts and enjoyments. Sleep, that was stretched out from evening to the fair bright day, is now broken into pieces and subdivided, not worth the accounting; the night that before seemed short is now too long, and the downy bed presseth hard against the bones. Exercise is now toiling, and walking abroad the carrying of a burden. The eye that flashed as lightning is now like the opacous body of a thick cloud; that which rolled from east to west swifter than a celestial orb, is now tired and weary with standing still."

Such is health, and to lose health is to lose success in life. Health, energetic health, is more to be desired than talent, or what is called genius; and many a man, credited with little or no ability, but owning vigorous health, has passed the "eminent man," and attained the goal before him. A record of successful statesmen would be a list of strong, healthy men. Peel, Brougham, Lyndhurst, Campbell, Bright, and Gladstone, the men

who have made history, have not been puling, weak dyspeptics. They have been strong men, as careful in the training of their bodies as the culture of their minds. Gladstone attained a widespread reputation for cutting down trees when he was over seventy; and at the same period he visited the Isle of Man, and much astonished the inhabitants by walks of five or six miles before breakfast! There is much truth in the saying, "A pound of energy with an ounce of talent will achieve greater results than a pound of talent with an ounce of energy." "In any of the learned professions, a vigorous constitution is equal to at least fifty per cent. more brain." Napoleon was accustomed to say, "The first requisite of good generalship is good health." It will be seen, on reference to the lives of eminent authors, that they have been, with rare exceptions, strong, healthy men. Knox was a strong, muscular man; Latimer and Luther were stalwart men; Isaac Barrow was a vigorous pugilist in his youth; Andrew Fuller, when a farmer's lad, was a capital boxer; Adam Clarke, when a lad, could roll large stones about; "Christopher North" could have held his ground against the professional pedestrian or athlete; and Sir Walter Scott was accustomed to energetic out-door sports throughout life.

There have, however, been exceptions, when men of weak bodies have achieved mental wonders. Pascal was a confirmed invalid at eighteen; Dr. Johnson carried through life a body ever full of pain; the immortal Nelson was diminutive and lame; Dr. Channing was "a

frail vessel;" Cæsar was a victim to epilepsy, and never planned a great battle without going into fits; Pope was a hunchback and an invalid; and Aristotle was a pigmy. But the rule is, nevertheless, that the work of the world is done by strong, healthy men.

But the knowledge and the practice of the laws of health, instead of being a first and foremost consideration, are generally neglected for the study of some comparatively unimportant branch of knowledge. Horace Mann, the distinguished friend of popular education, said: I am certain I could have performed twice the labour, both better and with greater ease to myself, had I known as much of the laws of health and life as I do now. In college I was taught all about the motions of the planets as carefully as though they would have been in danger of getting off the track if I had not known how to trace their orbits; but about my own organization, and the conditions indispensable to the healthful functions of my own body, I was left in profound ignorance. Nothing could be more preposterous. I ought to have begun at home, and then taken the stars when it should become their turn. The consequence was I broke down at the beginning of my second college year, and have never had a well day since. Whatever labour I have since been able to do I have done it all on credit instead of capital—a most ruinous way, either in regard to health or money. For the last twenty-five years, so far as regards health, I have been put from day to day on my good behaviour; and during the whole of this period, as a Hibernian

would say, if I had lived as other folks do for a month, I should have died in a fortnight."

Dr. Johnson said that every sick man is "a kind of rascal." It may be said with less ambiguity that the man that does not care for his health commits a fraud upon himself. Mr. Walter Powell, the Australian and London merchant, who furnished an admirable example of success in business, miserably failed in the preservation of his health. He wrote just before he died: “My crime is that I have tried to do too much. I have wrought in my business and in the church like a strong man, when I ought rather to have nursed myself. I could not believe my doctors that I was killing myself, till one day head and hand refused to work for me any more. That convinced me that I must relinquish all my offices in the church, and set about repairing myself." The repairing came too late-when the injury was done. Powell died in his forty-second year. Much better had he attained to only half his immense gains in business, honourably and honestly as they were attained, and lived twenty or thirty years longer to bless his family and the world. Mrs. Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D., in her work on the Laws of Life, observes: "In practical life, in the education of children, in the construction of cities, and the arrangement of society, we neglect the body; we treat it as an inferior dependant, subject to our caprices and depraved appetites, and quite ignore the fact that it is a complex living being, full of our humanity, and capable of doing us immense service if we would reverence it as our friend and equal.”

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