serve and examine the qualities and arrangements of external objects. The most pleasing and healthful exercise may be thus secured, and every step be made to add to useful knowledge, and to individual enjoy

ment.

The botanist, the geologist, and the natural historian, experience pleasure in their walks and rambles, of which, from disuse of their eyes and observing powers, the multitude is deprived. This truth is acted upon by many teachers, and one of the professed objects of infant education is to correct the omission formerly made.

It must not be supposed, however, that any kind of mental activity will give the necessary stimulus to muscular action, and that in walking, it will do equally well to read a book, or carry on a train of abstract thinking, as to seek the necessary nervous stimulus in picking up plants, hammering rocks, or engaging in games. This would be a great mistake, for in such cases the nervous impulse is opposed rather than favourable to muscular action.

Ready and pleasant mental activity, like that which accompanies easy conversation with a friend, is indeed beneficial, by diffusing a gentle stimulus over the nervous system; and it may be laid down as a general rule that any agreeable employment of an inspiriting and active kind, and which does not absorb the mind, adds to the advantages of muscular exercise; but wherever the mind is engaged in reading, or in abstract speculation, the muscles are drained, as it were, of their nervous energy, by reason of the great exhaustion of it by the brain; the active will to set them in motion is proportionally weakened, and their action is reduced to that inanimate kind I have already condemned as almost useless.

From this exposition, you will be able to appreciate the hurtfulness of the practice in many boardingschools and families, of sending out girls to walk with a book in their hands, and even obliging them

to learn by heart while in the act of walking. It would be difficult, indeed, to invent a method by which the ends in view could be more completely defeated, as regards both mind and body. The very effort of fixing the mind on the printed page, when in motion, strains the attention, impedes the act of breathing, distracts the nervous influence, and thus deprives the exercise of all its advantages.

In conclusion I would observe that for true and beneficial exercise there must, in cases where the mind is seriously occupied, be harmony of action between the mind which impels, and the part which obeys and acts. The will and the muscles must be both directed to the same end, and at the same time, otherwise the effect will be imperfect. But, in reading during exercise, this can never be the case.

The force exerted by strong muscles, animated by strong nervous impulse or will, is prodigiously greater than when the impulse is weak or discordant; and as man was made not to do two things at once, but to direct his whole powers to one thing at a time, he has ever excelled most when he has followed this law of nature.

REMARKS.

It has been stated, and on good authority, that Dr. Johnson, Dean Swift, and other luminaries of the literary world, not unfrequently, after intense application to study, took up "Little Jack Horner," "Jack the Giant Killer," and such like little books, and read with avidity, and the laughter the perusal

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excited completely dissipated the languor their intense application to study had produced. This tends very forcibly to prove the truth of that oft-repeated couplet,―

"A little nonsense now and then
Is relished by the best of men."

I have introduced a little nonsense into my lecture, but I hope it has been such as might "be relished by the best of men," and be in no wise offensive to the best of women.

LECTURE VIII.

THOUGHTS ON THE FOREST, AND A GLANCE AT THE TIMES, MANNERS, AND HABITS OF ROBIN HOOD AND HIS BOLD FORESTERS.

DELIVERED AT CIRENCESTER, BY INVITATION OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE MECHANICS' INSTITUTE, DECEMBER, 1856.