ir
night's quiet for a fair day's work; they would have lived longer, but
they would not have lived so fast. It is essential to live fast in this
busy world. Moreover, there is a superstitious reverence for early rising,
as a virtue by itself, which we shall do well to acquire. Let sanitary men
say, "Roost with the lark, if you propose to rise with her." Nonsense. No
civilized man can go to bed much earlier than midnight; but every man of
business must be up betimes. Idle, happy people, on the other hand, they
to whom life is useless, prudently remain for nine, ten, or a dozen hours
in bed. Snug in their corner, they are in the way of nobody, except the
housemaid.

-------------------------------------

"Now wotte we nat, ne can na see
What manir ende that there shall be."

Birth, sickness, burial. Eating, drinking, clothing, sleeping. Exercise,
and social pleasure. Air, water, and light. These are the topics upon
which we have already touched. A finished painting of good aegritudinary
discipline was not designed upon the present canvas: no man who knows the
great extent and varied surface of the scene which such a picture should
embrace, will think that there is here even an outline finished.

We might have recommended early marriages; and marriage with first
cousins. We might have urged all men with heritable maladies to shun
celibacy. We might have praised tobacco, which, by acting on the mucous
membrane of the mouth, acts on the same membrane in the stomach also
(precisely as disorder of the stomach will communicate disorder to the
mouth), and so helps in establishing a civilized digestion and a pallid
face.

"But we woll stint of this matere
For it is wondir long to here."

It is inherent in man to be perverse. A drawing-room critic, in one of
Gait's novels, takes up a picture of a cow, holds it inverted, and enjoys
it as a castellated mansion with four corner towers. And so, since "all
that moveth doth mutation love," after a like fashion, many people, it
appears, have looked upon these papers. There is a story to the point in
Lucian. Passus received commission from a connoisseur to draw a horse with
his legs upward. He drew it in the usual way. His customer came
unannounced, saw what had been done, and grumbled fearfully. Passus,
however, turned his picture up-side down, and then the connoisseur was
satisfied. These papers have been treated like the horse of Passus