nature, must plead guilty to the charge of being deficient in knowledge attainable by the most ordinary capacity; while he who fosters so unhappy a species of infidelity in others, must not complain if he be regarded as either manifesting gross ignorance or knowingly practising deception.

When the causes which derange the organization of the body are avoided, little danger exists of the continuity of that enviable, well-adjusted power of action which effectually precludes disease, being broken. Where due attention is paid to the rules I have indicated, death will never take place otherwise than by a gradual decay of nature, or by causes totally independent of the animal structure, or by accident. Years alone do not destroy life it is insidious disease, springing from the wearing influence of irritation on the body, by means of indolence and intemperance, that causes the thread of existence to be prematurely severed; and thus

"Man makes a death which nature never made."

A due regard to diet and regimen will enable the weakest, as well as the strongest, to protract the term of their existence. But the moment we lose sight of nature, and fall back into an artificial course of living, that moment commences a diminution of vigour, and a disturbance of the functions by which life is supported. The

most distressing consideration is, that the bad effects of this fatal transition, are not immediately perceptible many, consequently, pass their selfcontented lives as in a peaceful slumber; not discovering, till too late, that they have become their own destroyers; and never discovering at all, that it was in their own power to establish an equilibrium within themselves, which would have insured them health and strength, to run out the full term of life which nature had allotted to them in common with others.

The whole art of preserving the body in its natural state, consists in supplying that which is deficient, and carrying off that which is redundant: still, notwithstanding the reproductive powers of life, and the provisions made by nature for correcting every derangement incident to the human frame, every one knows that it contains within itself the elements of its own dissolution. period must ultimately arrive in each man's history, when the powers of life will be finally exhausted, and their regeneration be no longer possible. Let me, then, most earnestly beg of my readers to pause, and put this plain and serious question straitly to themselves :-WHY SHOULD

A

THAT PERIOD BE ACCELERATED BY OUR OWN INJUDICIOUS CONDUCT, OR BY DISEASE AND PAIN BEING SUBSTITUTED FOR HEALTH AND

PLEASURE?

DICTATES

OF

NATURE PERVERTED.

"Ignorance is preferable to error: he is nearer the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong."

THERE is but one principle of right in nature, and from a departure from that principle, spring all the train of evils that overtake us; for that which is artificial, comes, by force of habit, to be accounted natural, and makes that appear relatively right which is absolutely wrong. Never were false conclusions, opposed to truth and reason, more prevalent than at the present moment;-never was it more necessary to present in a concise and intelligible form, the laws by which the welfare of the animal economy is provided for. Nature has been pushed from her throne, by the voluptuous inventions and luxurious indulgencies by which the benefits of civilization and commerce have been alloyed among all those classes of society who have participated in them. We have surrendered the government of our appetites, and permitted them to gratify themselves, without re

gard to any consequences beyond that of immediate satisfaction. We know no limit to our sensuality, but the means of debauchery which labour and ingenuity, abusing the bounties of Providence, have furnished, on the one hand, and the impassable bounds of natural capacity on the other. Instead of temperance being the rule and indulgence the exception, as the great Bacon sagaciously advised, we have more than reversed the canon, indulging daily and abstaining only when we cannot help it.

To define temperance in a manner satisfactory to all persons in the present age, were indeed a hopeless undertaking; for it is with it as with the term "liberty," which in almost every country varies in signification. The only true criterion of what temperance* (another name for the true luxury of life) requires, is to be found in a man's unprovoked appetite, which naturally prescribes just bounds to the desire of self-gratification. Any other rule is a deception and depravity.

If it be demanded what more can be urged in favour of temperance than has already been advanced, since it is generally admitted that tem

*“Our well-being, our moral worth, our social happiness, our political tranquillity, all depend on that control of all our appetites and passions, which the ancients designate by the cardinal virtue of temperance."

BURKE,

perance

.

is good and intemperance evil; I answer, Nothing so long as that which is termed the "world's opinion" retains its paramount influence in spite of all the admonitions of reason and experience. To set forth, therefore, that temperance, exercise, early rising, and the breathing of pure air, are essential to health and length of life, will be but repeating that which has been urged by every moralist and writer on the subject from the remotest antiquity. Those terms are now of vague import; they may be-nay, really are, made to accommodate themselves to represent practices widely different from their true and original meaning; and such is the degeneracy of the present age, that they are found to have entirely lost the signification in which they were employed by our forefathers. It is idle for men to say, that they have sought in vain for health by conforming to the rules of temperate living, when in fact the real laws of nature have not been tried by them. Were I to hold out the prospect that health and long life are certain of attainment by the adoption of such temperance, such exercise, and such early rising, as the present acceptation of those terms implies, I should, instead of advocating rules of life derived from nature, be supporting the departure from primitive simplicity, and affording sanction to the almost universal relinquishment of the reality, for the appearance, of health.