evils. Children and young individuals require much sleep to afford full time to the organic system to build up the frame. At mature age the time allowed for sleep should be varied, as the amount or severity of the labours performed during the working hours. Individuals, too, differ from each other in their habits, and in the demand of their constitutions; but from six to eight hours' sleep is, in general, ample for individuals in middle life and performing a fair average amount of labour. It may generally be safely said that, if an individual sleep soundly for a few hours and then naturally awake, he should at once arise, and not try to sleep again with a hope of being further recruited; the second sleep is rarely sound or refreshing, unless the awakening has been the result of some noise or some abnormal state of body or mind. In food and drinks, as in sleep, due attention should be paid to the idiosyncrasies of individuals; general rules can, however, be easily followed. 1. Do not take food, except when the appetite demands it, that is, do not recruit the system but when the system has become exhausted. 2. Let the quantity of restorative nourishment be proportioned to the degree of exhaustion which previous labours have induced. 3. Select such food or foods, drink or drinks, as your own experience and the general usages of society point out as best

suited to your habits, and easiest of digestion. 4. Let the food and drinks be varied and mixed, and when in health do not torment yourself by too close an attention to any dietetic rules. 5. Take vegetable infusions, as tea, coffee, and fermented liquors, in moderation; but avoid distilled spirits altogether, except under the guidance of the physician. 6. Avoid active exertion or study, immediately after taking food. The period after a full meal cannot be generally better employed, than by some of those lighter occupations, called amusements, which should fill up a portion of every-day life. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," is an old and most true adage. The whole of a life cannot be well divided between the exhausting processes of labour and study, and the recruiting ones of feeding and sleeping; and the muscles will be rendered more firm, the step more elastic, the reasoning powers more acute, and the spirits be more buoyant, if the bow-string be often slackened, and slight amusements alternate with more serious avocations ;-for amusements are still avocations, but of a less exhausting kind, and should especially consist in a change of pursuits.

The sedentary student should walk or ride in the open air. The active labourer should sit still, and divert himself by reading or agreeable conversation. Whatever images or associations are before the mind in

LONGEVITY.

the hours of business, should be avoided, and images and associations as different as possible be sought for,

that the faculties which are exhausted should, as much as possible, lie dormant, and those be called into action which had been unemployed; thus the individual in middle age should pass, day after day, in healthful and laborious employments, alternating with relaxation and amusement; sustained by a due supply of nourishing food, and recruited for 6 or 8 hours out of the 24, by the total obliviousness of sleep. 7. Let prudence govern the passions. The action of the passions on the frame, in exciting or depressing its powers, would form a curious subject of investigation; for our present purpose, it is sufficient to remark in general, that whilst some, as fear, are directly depressing, appearing to act at once on the nervous system, others, as anger, revenge, &c., appear to affect more directly the arterial system, and to excite more or less powerfully the whole being. They resolve themselves into occupations of the mind, and may be regarded in that light as exciting in the first instance, and hence inducing greater or less depression, as the excitement has been more or less violent, or long continued. But there is one great master passion, or rather, perhaps, animal instinct, the effects of which deserve to be studied. The desire of sexual congress is as natural to

man as to all animals. Nature has thus provided for the continuance of the species. Although not really one of the passions of the mind, it is like all voluntary motion under mental control, and although a strong feeling of desire may involuntarily arise, from various causes of excitement, whether aided by a plethoric state of the system or not, yet it is in the power of a well-ordered mind, to control and regulate this as well as all other voluntary actions of the body. This is most important, because, at all times, the exercise of the sexual organs is exceedingly depressing, and the too frequent repetition of such act must exhaust the vital powers, and induce extreme debility, both mental and bodily. I say the too frequent, for here, as in all cases, it is impossible to lay down any definite rules. The constitution, the natural strength of the individual, and the surrounding circumstances, have, in each case, a varying influence; but this is most clear, that although sexual congress, like the performance of all other natural functions, is healthful when duly called for,-the exciting thereto by any artificial means is in the highest degree to be deprecated. The discharge of the seminal fluid induces at all times languor and temporary debility. In early life, this is transient, and the action of coition may be often repeated under very slight excitement, but by so doing, the most important powers of the

continue to possess promatre powers ma vay late period, there a 3. passie via so zaż requires the control of reason as the bestre fir serall congress, and perhaps none which is more completely under the control of a wregated and D-reguated and... To undage in it moderately is to flüow out the dictates of nature, and is useful by relieving a plethone state of the organs of generation, which a vigorous state cẻ healtà naturally induces in the early and mide perod of life. To excite the organs to action when to such plethoric state exists, to stimulate them to uncalled-for exercise too early or too late in life, is to debilitate the whole frame seriously, and to make an injurious exertion of the powers of the constitution.

Morality, as well as

good sense, strongly inculcate the necessity of con