what Sir Walter Scott
has to do with Angelina, except to supply her with novel-reading, and
with passages for impassioned recitation, at the twilight hour, from the
"Lady of the Lake." But that same Scott has left one remark on record
which may yet save the lives and reasons of greater men than himself,
more gifted women (if that were possible) than Angelina, if we can only
accept it with the deference to which that same healthiness of his
entitles it. He gave it as his deliberate opinion, in conversation with
Basil Hall, that five and a half hours form the limit of healthful
mental labor for a mature person. "This I reckon very good work for a
man," he said,--adding, "I can very seldom reach six hours a day; and I
reckon that what is written after five or six hours' hard mental labor
is not good for much." This he said in the fulness of his magnificent
strength, and when he was producing, with astounding rapidity, those
pages of delight over which every new generation still hangs enchanted.

He did not mean, of course, that this was the maximum of possible mental
labor, but only of wise and desirable labor. In later life, driven by
terrible pecuniary involvements, he himself worked far more than this.
Southey, his contemporary, worked far more,--writing, in 1814, "I cannot
get through more than at present, unless I give up sleep, or the little
exercise I take (walking a mile and back, after breakfast); and, that
hour excepted, and my meals, (barely the meals, for I remain not one
minute after them,) the pen or the book is always in my hand." Our own
time and country afford a yet more astonishing instance. Theodore
Parker, to my certain knowledge, has often spent in his study from
twelve to seventeen hours daily, for weeks together. But the result in
all these cases has sadly proved the supremacy of the laws which were
defied; and the nobler the victim, the more tremendous the warning
retribution.

Let us return, then, from the practice of Scott's ruined days to the
principles of his sound ones. Supposing his estimate to be correct, and
five and a half hours to be a reasonable limit for the day's work of a
mature brain, it is evident that even this must be altogether too much
for an immature one. "To suppose the youthful brain," says the recent
admirable report by Dr. Ray, of the Providence Insane Hospital, "to be
capable of an amount of work which is considered an ample allowance to
an adult brain is simply absurd, an