productive of many evils. It induces undue relaxation, and creates an unnatural heat, so injurious as often to occasion those dreadful maladies, the gravel and the stone. Horse-hair mattresses are perhaps the most healthful couches. Hard beds afford the only means of resting the body, without at the same time debilitating it. The celebrated Locke says, "Being buried every night in feathers, melts and dissolves the body, is often the cause of weakness, and is the forerunner of an early grave."

AIR.

"Behold the labourer of the glebe, who toils
In dust, in rain, in cold, and sultry skies!
Save but the grain from mildews and the flood,
Nought anxious he what sickly stars ascend:
He knows no laws by Esculapius given,
He studies none."

MAN is constituted capable of encountering every vicissitude of weather and variation of climate, of digesting every species of food, and of performing almost any degree of bodily labour, so long as he observes certain rules which are calculated to sustain the stomach in the full possession of its powers. This may in general be accomplished by moderation in food and by fearless exposure to the weather in all its changes, at least till experience warns us that we can no longer endure it without incurring positive injury.

We should inure ourselves betimes to the sudden changes of our inconstant clime; but this we never can with our present effeminacy. We must cease to live in rooms heated by enormous fires,

and defended from the smallest breath of external air; we must renounce our close carriages for the horse's back, or, better still, our own feet; we must take the cold instead of the warm bath; we must not surround our beds with curtains (a custom now too prevalent), and we must give up adapting our dress to every trifling alteration in the weather; we must habituate ourselves to rooms of a low temperature, taking active exercise in the open air, particularly in the colder months, and braving with indifference, at all times, the inclemencies of the seasons.

Air, by reason of its extreme subtlety and weight, penetrates into and mingles with every part of the body, and by its elasticity gives an intestine motion to all the fluids, and a lively spring to all the fibres which promote the circulation. As it is, therefore, the principal moving cause of all the fluids and solids of the human body, we ought, as far as lies in our power, to be exceedingly careful in choosing a healthy air.

In this country, the pressure of the atmosphere very suddenly varies; and, according to the variation, the vessels of the body are as suddenly either contracted or expanded. We abound in fogs, which greatly impair the tone and elasticity of our fibres, injure the substance of the blood, and

vitiate all the humours. If we would guard against these evil tendencies, therefore, we must accustom ourselves to endure the vicissitudes of our climate. We have only to preserve ourselves from extremes, not from every trifling variation.

A bed-room cannot be too airy; yet, in direct violation of the fundamental laws of respiration, we surround our beds with heavy curtains, as if for the express purpose of confining the impure air, thus counteracting all the advantages of a spacious apartment. One-third part of our existence, and in many cases more, is passed in our bed-rooms: ought we not, then, to adopt measures for expelling, instead of preserving, the insidious influence of impure air, rendered so by being impregnated with the noxious effluvia of hot and putrescent vapours exhaled from our bodies? Do we not sleep with doors closed for hours together, and not unfrequently without the usual channels of ventilation? Nay, do we not even study to obstruct the free ingress of the external atmosphere? It should be remembered, that the same air cannot enter the lungs more than four times without carrying with it properties hostile to the principles of life. A moment's consideration of the state in which the air must be that is confined all night within bed-curtains, and is respired innumerable times, will explain how it is that we rise in the

G

morning with pale and emaciated faces. It is of much greater importance to preserve a current of air in the bed-room than in the drawing-room.

*

The oxygen of a gallon of air, it is calculated, is consumed by one person each minute; if, therefore, our ordinary rooms are not furnished with some means whereby the air may be constantly renewed, they will in a very short time be charged with a fluid unfit for respiration. A lighted candle is found to require about the same quantity of oxygen in the same time, which evinces the evil of burning all night. These facts show how essential it is to have our rooms, and particularly our bed-rooms, thoroughly ventilated. In advising the abolition. of bed-curtains, I am well aware that I expose myself to heavy censures, especially from the female part of the community; but my duty is to point out what is essential to health, and to denounce what is inimical to it. I confess it to be a strong denunciation, but it is true to the very letter.

The unhealthiness of cities and large towns arises principally from the narrowness of the

* Dr. Arbuthnot said that "three thousand human beings living within the compass of an acre of ground would make an atmosphere of their own steam about seventy-one feet high, which, if not carried away by winds, would turn pestiferous in a moment."