over-exercised, were prodigiously swollen; on the contrary, the
racers were meagre upwards, while their feet acquired an unnatural
dimension. The secret source of life seems to be carried forwards to
those parts which are making the most continued efforts.

In all sedentary labours, some particular malady is contracted by
every worker, derived from particular postures of the body and
peculiar habits. Thus the weaver, the tailor, the painter, and the
glass-blower, have all their respective maladies. The diamond-cutter,
with a furnace before him, may be said almost to live in one; the
slightest air must be shut out of the apartment, lest it scatter away
the precious dust--a breath would ruin him!

The analogy is obvious;[58] and the author must participate in the
common fate of all sedentary occupations. But his maladies, from the
very nature of the delicate organ of thinking, intensely exercised,
are more terrible than those of any other profession; they are more
complicated, more hidden in their causes, and the mysterious union
and secret influence of the faculties of the soul over those of the
body, are visible, yet still incomprehensible; they frequently produce
a perturbation in the faculties, a state of acute irritability, and
many sorrows and infirmities, which are not likely to create much
sympathy from those around the author, who, at a glance, could have
discovered where the pugilist or the racer became meagre or monstrous:
the intellectual malady eludes even the tenderness of friendship.

The more obvious maladies engendered by the life of a student arise
from over-study. These have furnished a curious volume to Tissot, in
his treatise "On the Health of Men of Letters;" a book, however, which
chills and terrifies more than it does good.

The unnatural fixed postures, the perpetual activity of the mind, and
the inaction of the body; the brain exhausted with assiduous toil
deranging the nerves, vitiating the digestive powers, disordering its
own machinery, and breaking the calm of sleep by that previous state
of excitement which study throws us into, are some of the calamities
of a studious life: for like the ocean when its swell is subsiding,
the waves of the mind too still heave and beat; hence all the small
feverish symptoms, and the whole train of hypochondriac affections, as
well as some acute ones.[59]

Among the correspondents of the poets Hughes and Thomson, there is a
pathetic letter from a student