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BEST TIME FOR TAKING EXERCISE. MAN being intended for a life of activity, all his functions are constituted by Nature to fit him for this object, and they never go on so successfully as when his external situation is such as to demand the regular exercise of all his organs. It is accordingly curious to observe the admirable manner in which each is linked, in its action and sympathies, with the When the muscular system, for example, is duly exercised, increased action in its vessels and nerves takes place; but the evils arising from deficiency of exercise to all the functions of the mind and body, are the converse of the advantages to be derived from adequate exercise. The circulation becomes languid; the feebleness of action occasions little waste of materials, and little demand for a new supply; the appetite and digestion consequently become weak; respiration heavy and imperfect; and the blood so ill-conditioned, that, when distributed through the body, it proves inadequate to communicate the stimulus requisite for healthy and vigorous action.

The time at which exercise ought to be taken, however, is of some consequence in obtaining from it beneficial results. Those who are in perfect health may engage in it at almost any hour, except immediately after a full meal; but those who are not robust, ought to confine their hours of exercise within narrower limits. To a person in full vigour, a good walk in the country before breakfast may be highly beneficial and exhilarating; while to an invalid or delicate person, it will prove more detrimental than useful, and will induce a sense of weariness, which will spoil the pleasure of the whole day. Many are deceived by the current poetical praises of the freshness of morning, and hurt themselves in summer, by seeking health in untimely promenades.

In order to be beneficial, exercise must be resorted to only when the system is sufficiently vigorous to be able to meet it. This is the case after a lapse of from two to four or five hours after a moderate meal, and, consequently, the forenoon is the best time. If exercise be delayed till some degree of exhaustion from the want of food has occurred, it speedily dissipates instead of increases, the strength which remains, and impairs, instead of promotes digestion. The result is quite natural; for exercise of every kind causes increased action and waste in the organ, and if there be not materials and vigour enough in the general system to keep up that action and supply the waste, nothing but increased debility can reasonably be expected.

For the same reason, exercise immediately before meals, unless of a very gentle description, is injurious, and an interval of rest ought always to intervene. Muscular action causes an alllux of blood and nervous energy to the surface and extremities, and if food be swallowed whenever the activity ceases, and before time has been allowed for a different distribution of the vital powers to take place, the stomach is taken at disadvantage, and from want of the necessary action in its vessels and nerves, is unable to carry on digestion with success.

Exercise ought to be equally avoided after a heavy meal. In such circumstances the functions of the digestive organs are in their highest state of activity; and if the muscular system be then called into considerable action, the withdrawal of the vital stimuli of the blood and nervous influence from the stomach to the extremities, is sufficient almost to stop the digestive process. This is no supposition, but demonstrated fact, and, accordingly, there is a natural and marked aversion to active pursuits after a full meal.

A mere stroll, which requires no exertion, and does not fatigue, will not be injurious before or after eating; but exercise beyond this limit is hurtful at such times. All, therefore, whose object is to improve or preserve health, and whose occupations are in their own power, ought to arrange these, so as to observe faithfully this important law, for they will otherwise deprive themselves of most of the benefits arising from exercise.

When we know that we shall be forced to exertion soon after eating, we ought to make a very moderate meal, to avoid setting the stomach and muscles at variance with each other, and exciting feverish disdisturbance. In travelling by a stage-coach, where no repose is allowed, this precaution is invaluable. If we eat heartily as appetite suggests, and then enter the coach, restlessness, flushing, and fatigue are inevitable; whereas, by eating sparingly, the journey may be continued for two or three days and nights, with less weariness than is felt during onefourth of the time under full feeding.

It is frequently the custom, apparently for the purpose of saving time, to take young people out to walk about the close of the day, because there is not light enough to do anything in the house. Nothing can be more injudicious than this plan; for, in the first place, exercise once a day is very insufficient for the young; and even supposing that it were enough, the air is then more loaded with moisture, colder, and proportionally more unhealthy than at any other time; and the absence of the beneficial stimulus of the solar light diminishes not a little its invigorating influence. For those, consequently, who are so little out of doors, as the inmates of boarding-schools, and children living in towns, and who are all at the period of growth, the very best time of the day ought to be chosen for exercise, particularly as in-door occupations are, after night-fall, more in accordance with the order of nature.

By devoting part of the forenoon, also, to exercise, another obvious advantage is gained. If the weather prove unfavourable at an early hour, it may clear up in time to admit of going out later in the day; whereas, if the afternoon alone be allotted to exercise, and the weather then proves bad, the day is altogether lost. When the muscular system is duly exercised in the open air early in the day, the power of mental application is considerably increased; while by delaying till late, the efficiency of the whole previous mental labour is diminished by the restless craving for motion, which is evinced by the young of all animals, and which, when unsatisfied, distracts attention, and leads to idleness in schools.

To render exercise as beneficial as possible, particularly in educating the young, it ought always to be taken in the open air, and to be of a nature to occupy the mind as well as the body. Gardening, hoeing, social play, and active sports of every kind, cricket, bowls, shuttlecock, the ball, archery, quoits, hide and seek, and similar occupations and recreations, well known to the young, are infinitely preferable to regular and unmeaning walks, and tend, in a much higher degree, to develop and strengthen the bodily frame, and to secure a straight spine, and an erect and firm, but easy and graceful carriage. A formal walk is odious and useless to many girls, who would be delighted and benefited by spending three or four hours a-day in spirited exercise and useful employment.

Let those mothers who are afraid to trust to Nature, for strengthening and developing the limbs and spines of their daughters, attend to FACTS, and their fears will vanish. It is notorious that many girls, from injudicious management, and insufficient exercise,

become deformed; an occurrence which is rare in boys, who are left, in conformity with the designs of Nature, to acquire strength and symmetry from free and unrestrained muscular action. Yet such is the dominion of prejudice and habit, that with these results meeting our observation in every quarter, we continue to make as great a distinction in the physical education of the two sexes in early life, as if they belonged to different orders of beings, and were constructed on such opposite principles, that what was to benefit the one, must necessarily hurt the other. [Abridged from COMBE's Physiology applied to Health.]

THE GIGANTIC SALAMANDER,
(Salamandra gigantea.)

THE Salamander belongs to that order of reptiles called Batrachians, from their resemblance, to a certain extent, to the frog tribes. The Batrachia include all the reptiles with naked bodies, without the hard covering of the tortoises, or scales like serpents. The whole of this order are without nails on the toes, and they all undergo various changes or metamorphoses; the different changes in the organization of the Salamanders nearly resemble those which occur in the case of the frogs and toads, which have been more fully described under the head of the Surinam Toad*.

The name of the Salamander must be familiar to most of our readers, from its having been applied by the ancients to a fabulous creature, which was supposed to possess the power of existing in the midst of flames, and even of quenching the fire by which it was surrounded. In our own times a strange belief exists among the ignorant, that if any fire remains unquenched for the space of seven years, a Salamander will be produced. But the inquiries of modern science have shown, that the only foundation for all these fables concerning the harmless reptile represented below, is the humble means of self-defence granted to it by the Creator.

The body of the Salamander is covered with pores, from which, when alarmed, or suffering from pain, an acrid watery humour exudes, which is at times able so far to quench the fury of the flames as to give the poor creature time to escape, and in this

See Saturday Magazine, Vol. II., p. 15.

simple fact consists the whole of the mysterious power that has been attributed to it.

The Salamanders are divided into two sections, the aquatic, that rarely leave the water, (our common eft is an example,) and the terrestrial, who only remain in that element during their tadpole state. The aquatic Salamanders have a tail flattened sideways, so as to assist them in swimming.

The experiments of Spallanzani, on their astonishing power of reproducing a limb, have rendered them famous. The same limb can be reproduced several times in succession, after it has been cut off, and that with all its bones, muscles, &c. Another faculty, not less singular, is that of remaining a long time encompassed with ice without perishing.

The Salamanders were erroneously placed by Linnæus among the Lizards, but they have been most properly transferred to the order to which they now belong, and to which they bear a much greater affinity, especially from their transformations.

it was

Although the reptile figured in the engraving is called gigantic, in reference to the size of most of the genus, it does not exceeed eighteen inches in length. Some few years back, however, a Salamander was discovered in Japan, to which the name gigantic might be applied with much greater propriety. A living specimen was taken, and conveyed to the museum at Leyden five years since; then about twelve inches long, but it has since then grown to the length of two feet and a half, although confined in a wooden vessel containing water. It is of a very dark olive-green colour, and covered with tubercles, nearly resembling in form the species represented in the engraving. It feeds sparingly on small living fish which are placed in its prison; its appetite, however, only recurs at long intervals, and its destined prey seem perfectly unconscious of the presence of an enemy, and when alarmed, take refuge under the very jaws of the reptile.

Ir mankind in the present day were strictly to aanere to those practices which promote the health and well-being of their minds and bodies, and as strictly to abstain from those which tend to injure them, there would be little or that the men of modern days scarcely possess the sixth no cause to complain that our race is degenerating, and part of the strength of their forefathers.-HODGKIN.

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LONDON Published by JOHN WILLIAM PARKER, WEST STRAND; and sold by all Booksellers.

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UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE COMMITTEE OF GENERAL LITERATURE AND EDUCATION, APPOINTED BY THE SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE.

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THE CITY OF BRUGES,

IN BELGIUM.

THE Belgian city of Bruges is one of the most ancient and remarkable among the towns of the Netherlands. Like many others which are to be found in Europe, and nowhere in greater profusion than in the same territory with itself, it exhibits the melancholy instance of a town, which had been raised by the fostering hand of Commerce to the highest pitch of wealth and prosperity, becoming so reduced as to retain only just enough of its former greatness to render most striking the contrast between its ancient and its present state. During the latter years of the middle ages, Bruges was the first city for trade and manufactures in the whole of Europe, and probably of the world; the rank which it now enjoys is very far indeed from that lofty pre-eminence, scarcely sufficient, indeed, when compared with that of other cities, to be deemed of any importance whatsoever. Bruges, or Brügge, as it is called, is now the capital of the province of West Flanders; during the time that Belgium was united with France, from 1795 to the downfall of Napoleon in 1814, the city was the capital of the department of the Lys. It stands in a level plain, at the distance of about eight miles in a direct line from the coast; it has no river or natural piece of water in its immediate neighbourbood, but the fine canal which runs from Ghent to Ostend passes through it, and affords it all the advantages of an easy communication with the sea. This canal is both broad and deep, so as to be navigable for ships of from 200 to 300 tons' burden; a branch from it leads to Sluys or Ecluse, which, previous to its temporary separation from Flanders, and annexation to the United Provinces in the sixteenth century, used to be the port of Bruges.

terranean could not be performed in a single summer. It became desirable, therefore, that some half-way station should be chosen, as a magazine or storehouse wherein the two classes of traders might deposit and exchange their merchandise; and the choice fell upon Bruges, which had for some time previous been a place of considerable resort. This city accordingly became the general rendezvous; thither the merchants of Italy, particularly those of Venice, resorted, and in return for the manufactures of their own country and the precious commodities which they had laboriously brought from India and the East, they received the more bulky, but not less useful, produce of the north, its iron, copper, corn, flax, hemp, timber, and other articles invaluable as naval stores.

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The commercial connexion between Bruges and our own country had been of some importance before that city became a Hanseatic factory; and it afterwards increased to a great extent, being apparently of much value in the eyes of both parties. In the year 1296, the merchants of Bruges obtained considerable privileges in their trade with Britain,—or to use the phrase of modern times, they were placed on the footing of the most favoured nations; for at the instance of Guy, Earl of Flanders, permission was granted by our monarch, Edward the First, that "they should purchase wool throughout England, Ireland, and Scotland, and practise all other kinds of mercantile dealings as freely as had been permitted to the Lombards." Not half a century afterwards, Bruges was made what was called the staple for English wool,-that is to say, the fixed market to which all persons exporting wool from England were bound to carry it; we read in Rymer's Fadera, that in this year King Edward the Third re-established the staple for English wool, woolfels, leather, and tin, at Bruges; directing the mayor, constable, and community of Merchants of the Staple of England, to govern the trade thither, and to impose taxes, tallages, &c., relating thereto." This staple seems, however, to have been transferred wholly, or in part, to Calais, not many years afterwards. In the year 1358, however, the connexion was drawn still closer, through the agency of the ancient company, or Fellowship of the Merchant Adventurers of England,-the Brotherhood of St. Thomas à Becket, as they were originally called; who obtained from Louis de Male, Count of Flanders, an ample concession of privileges, which led them to fix their Flemish establishment, and with it the staple for English woollen cloth, at Bruges;-" whereby," says one of their secretaries, a great concourse of merchants were drawn to that city, from all Europe." Not many years after this period, at least in 1407, Bruges was formally declared the staple port for Scottish ships and merchandise; which it had been, in fact, for some time previous.

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The origin of Bruges is referred to the seventh or the eighth century, and the city is supposed to have risen from the ruins of a town called Oudembourg, which was destroyed by the Danes and Normans; its name is by some derived from the number and magnificence of its bridges, or brüggen, and by others from a particular bridge called Brugstoc, which stood between Oudembourg and another town called then Rodembourg, and afterwards, Ardemberg. In the year 800, according to Mr. Grattan, Bruges had already a flourishing trade; and 90 years afterwards, it was for the first time surrounded with walls by Baldwin, surnamed le Chauve, or the Bald, who at that time held the Earldom or county of Flanders as a fief under the French crown. A strong encouragement to its commercial prosperity was given in the year 960, when a fair was established in it by Count Baldwin the Third; and through the long course of five succeeding centuries, while the greater part of Europe was sunk in the darkest barbarism; the Throughout the long course of years which had industrious burghers of Bruges were slowly securing elapsed from the age of its foundation, this city had the advantages of wealth and civilization. The not been without considerable drawbacks upon its manufacture of wove fabrics, for which Flanders was prosperity; it had suffered a variety of misfortunes, at so early a period distinguished, became to this city and had not been without a full share of what few a vast source of profit; and a further means of ad- cities of any note could then hope to escape,—the vancement was afforded it, by the establishment of calamities of war. On more than one occasion, the the herring-trade, in the fourteenth century. greater part of the town had been destroyed by fire. About the year 1262, the merchants of the Han-The heaviest ills, however, inflicted on it, were brought seatic League first began to resort to Bruges, and soon afterwards they made it one of their four great comptoirs or factories. The commerce then existing between the nations of the north of Europe and those of its southern countries had already become extensive through the enterprise of the cities on the Baltic. But still so defective was the state of navigation, that a voyage between that sea and the Medi

about by internal commotions and disputes with their sovereign; and to them the turbulent character of its inhabitants much contributed. "The great riches," says a French writer, supposed to be Huet, Bishop of Avranches, "which commerce brought to the citizens of Bruges, rendered them not only insolent and unjust towards foreign merchants, thus causing these indeed to withdraw, but even towards their sovereign."

The Hanseatic writers, according to Anderson, | complain loudly of the petulance and insolence of the inhabitants of Bruges to their people; and the dissatisfaction which this conduct at length occasioned was such, that resolutions were actually taken in the general meetings of the Deputies of the Hanse Towns, to break off all commerce with Flanders, although eventually a reconciliation took place. The spirit of haughty independence which these citizens acquired with their prosperity is indeed remarkable; it fostered in them a proneness to turbulence and discontent, which the slightest provocation, real or imaginary, would often inflame into open rebellion. It is almost impossible to read a few pages of their country's annals without meeting with some instance of this disposition; it usually begins with an act of violence on the part of the burghers, perhaps the murder of an obnoxious officer, and usually ends with their submission, fine, and pardon.

Bruges was at the height of its greatness in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Dr. Robertson calls it "the store-house from which the nations of Europe were supplied. Never," he adds, "did wealth appear more conspicuously in the train of commerce; the citizens of Bruges, enriched by it, displayed in their dress, their buildings, and mode of living, such magnificence as even to mortify the pride, and excite the envy of royalty." He alludes here to the oftrepeated story which is told by Meyer, in the annals of Flanders, in connexion with the visit paid to Bruges, in 1301, by King Philippe le Bel, of France, and his queen, Joanna of Navarre, when nearly all Flanders had submitted to the French monarch.Guicciardini thus relates it:-" Considering well the magnificence and opulence of this city, they wondered and were astounded, and the queen herself, amongst other things, attentively remarking the splendour and pomp of the women, became moved by female envy, (mark well the fact, observes the French translator of Guicciardini,) and filled with disdain, she exclaimed, Alas! I thought that I had been queen alone here, and I find myself but one in a hundred!' and there is no doubt," adds the writer, "that this envy and anger of this princess (a thing remarkable,) produced in after-time, both to this city, and the whole country, the most heavy troubles."

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Of the actual extent of the commerce of Bruges we have little means of judging; a few incidental notices in the pages of historians, enable us to form some conception of it. In its most prosperous times, there used to come to this city 40,000 bags of wool from Spain alone; this number was aftewards reduced to 25,000, valued at 625,000 scudi. The importance of the traffic in Indian goods with Venice, appears from the fact, that in the year 1318, five Venetian galeasses-vessels of considerable burden -laden with those commodities, arrived at Bruges, in order to dispose of their cargoes at the fair. In the year 1468, there arrived at the same time in the harbour of Sluys-the harbour of Bruges-no less than 150 merchant-ships; but the annalist who records the fact, mentions it as a rare occurrence." Speaking of the flourishing condition of the city about this period, Bishop Huet remarks, that there was then scarcely any nation, at all considerable, which had not in it a factory, and a company of merchants for carrying on business; there were those of the English, French, Scotch, Castilians, Portuguese, Aragonese, Navarrese, Catalans, Biscayans, Venetians, Florentines, Genoese, Lucchese, Milanese, Germans, Danes, Swedes, and of the Hanseatic cities. All these different nations, he adds, carried thither the commodities of their respective countries, and

exchanged the various kinds for one another, as well as for the wove fabrics of Flanders itself. The reputation which the artisans of Bruges had obtained in the working of the precious metals, is curiously shown by an act of the Scottish parliament passed in 1489; its title is "of Gold-smithes," and it provides that those of Scotland-whom it charges with making "fals mixture of evil mettel"-shall for the future make their works of the fineness of the new works of silver of Bruges, and that there shall be a deacon of the craft, who "sall examine the said wark and fines thereof, and see that it be als gude as the said wark of Bruges."

The decline of Bruges is dated from the year 1487, when a dispute arose between the city and its sovereign Maximilian, the son of the Emperor of Germany. A war followed, which lasted ten years; the citizens in the end preserved their rights and privileges, but their commerce had in the mean while received a fatal blow. Maximilian blockaded the port of Sluys, and thus cut them off from the sea; their commerce passed away to their jealous rivals of Antwerp and Amsterdam, who had warmly aided the archduke in all his measures, and who obtained from him in return, all the commercial privileges which Bruges had before enjoyed exclusively. Antwerp was the chief gainer; its prosperity is always dated from the downfall of Bruges, whose foreign merchants repaired to it in great numbers.

In the year 1515, the English merchants quitted Bruges, and betook themselves to the rising city of Antwerp; and in the following year, the remainder of the other foreign merchants imitated their example, so that none but the Spaniards remained. Again, however, in less than half a century, the forsaken city recovered some portion of its former prosperity; for in 1558, the sudden loss of Calais caused the English to re-establish in it the staple for their wool,

much to the benefit of its inhabitants. It was soon after this period that Guicciardini wrote his description of the Netherlands; and the account which he gives of Bruges, shows us that, though fallen from its ancient greatness, it still held a high rank among the manufacturing towns of Europe. That writer speaks of its "abundance" of cloths, tapestry, fustians, serges, &c., and of the "marvellous quantity" of silk prepared in it; indeed, he tells us that, of the artisans engaged in the fabrication of those kinds of articles, there were no less than sixtyeight crafts, or companies. Yet this prosperity was but transient; for under the severe pressure of warfare, and the fatal influence of religious persecution, the pre-eminence of Flanders as a manufacturing district began to pass rapidly to other countries.

The people of Bruges were sensible of its decline, and did not suffer it to continue without an effort to arrest its progress. In Thurloe's collection of statepapers, there are preserved two letters which were addressed, about the middle of the seventeenth century, by the magistrates of the city to the Company of Merchant Adventurers of England, courteously inviting them to fix their Flemish establishment in Bruges, which had been its ancient seat. The first was dated in the year 1649; and the answer to it requested preliminary stipulations, for an exemption from certain tolls and taxes, and for the free exercise by the English merchants of their own religion. The second invitation was addressed two years afterwards, in 1651; and to this the company replied, "That as the said letters (of the magistrates) were entirely silent in the two most material articles; viz, the free exercise of their religion, and the duties to be paid, they desire a peremptory answer thereto:

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