es as you please, and
cross-question them as severely as you can, they never falter in this
testimony, that, where intelligence abounds, there physical vigor does
much more abound? that, where education is broad and generous, there the
years are many and happy?

If, therefore, facts can prove anything, it is that just such a
condition of life as that which is growing more and more general among
us, and which our common-school system directly fosters, where every man
is becoming an educated man,--where the farmer upon his acres, the
merchant at his desk, and the mechanic in his shop, no less than the
scholar poring over his books shall be in the truest sense
educated,--that such a condition is the one of all others which promotes
habits of thought and action, an elasticity of temper and a breadth of
vision and interest most conducive to health and vigor. It is the
fashion to talk of the appearance of superior robustness so
characteristic of our English brethren. But we suspect that in this
case, too, appearances are deceitful. That climate may produce in us a
restless energy inconsistent with rounded forms and rosy cheeks we
freely allow. But in strength and real endurance the New England
constitution will yield to none. And the stern logic of facts shows
beyond a peradventure, that here there are no influences, climatic or
intellectual, which war with longevity. What may be hidden in the
future, what results may come from a still wider diffusion of education,
we cannot tell, but hitherto nothing but good has come of
ever-increasing knowledge.

* * * * *

We hasten now to inquire concerning the health and years of special
classes of literary men: not, indeed, to prove that there is no real war
between the mind and the body,--for we consider that point to be already
demonstrated,--but rather to show that we need shrink from no field of
inquiry, and that from every fresh field will come new evidence of the
substantial truth of our position.

We have taken the trouble to ascertain the average age of all the
English poets of whom Johnson wrote lives, some fifty or sixty in all.
Here are great men and small men, men with immortal names and men whose
names were long since forgotten, men of good habits and men whose habits
would undermine any constitution, flourishing, too, in a period when
human life was certainly far shorter in England than now. And how long
did they live? What do you think