authority of Drs. Holland, Hall, Rush, and others, that enforce the "duty of health," such

as

DUE DISCRIMINATION AND SELF-CONTROL IN RELATION TO OUR FOOD.

That we abstain from whatever is found to injure, and restrict ourselves rigidly to that sort and amount of aliment, whether animal or vegetable, which is most conducive to our general vigour and enjoyment, and which best comports with an active, cheerful, and sound mind in a sound body. Plutarch says that his countrymen, the Baotians, were remarkable for their stupidity because they ate too much. They were good trencher-men, and good for nothing else. Let these and preceding hints on diet be properly heeded by the religious man, and his own experience will prove that his spiritual as well as intellectual enjoyment and usefulness are closely connected both with the quality and quantity of his daily food, and the right times for taking it. Richard Cumberland says in his Memoirs, Nature has given me the hereditary blessing of a constitutional

and habitual temperance, that revolts at excess of any sort, and never suffers appetite to load the frame. I am accordingly as fit to resume my book or my pen the instant after my meal, as I was in the freshest hours of the morning.

GIVE BOTH MIND AND BODY SUFFICIENT REST, AND AT THE PROPER SEASON.

Not a small proportion of that despondency which is so incident to the sedentary class comes from excessive study at unseasonable hours. It is one of the "diseases of literature," to which good men are as liable as others. It is night study, Dr. Johnson says, that ruins the constitution, by keeping up a bewildered chaos of impressions on the brain during the succeeding sleep-if that can be called sleep which is constantly interrupted by incoherent dreams, and half-waking trains of thought. Physiologists have proved that periodical rest is necessary to the reproduction of that power in the nerves by which the will is enabled to act on the muscles. A due proportion of repose, therefore, is essential to the proper manifestation of mind in the orderly

use of the body. We have known many remarkable cases of nervous disorder which were connected with this sort of imprudence. Night watching, or late sitting up, was reprobated in a doctor's Manual for the Nervous, written two hundred years ago, as tending to "tire and waste the animal spirits, by keeping them too long upon duty, debilitating nature, and thereby shortening the period of usefulness," according to the maxim,

Quod caret alterna requie, durable non est.

What would endure, must have alternate rest.

A theological student, who was about abandoning his studies in utter discouragement from declining health, was induced to forego his purpose until he had tried what could be done for him by a change of habits as to eating, sleeping, study, and rest. The new regimen proved so beneficial, that without the aid of drugs, by which he imagined his life had been sustained, he began to recover. short time his mind became cheerful, he re

In a

gained his bodily vigour, and resumed his stu

dies, which he afterwards prosecuted with equal profit and pleasure. It was the Rev. Dr. Miller's counsel not to study much by night. Begin with the dawn of day, and improve every moment of daylight that you can secure; but be extremely cautious of night studies. I have known them to injure incurably the eyes and the general health of many unwary students before they apprehended the least danger. Study, to a late hour at night, ought never to be indulged at all by any one who values his health. Two hours sleep before midnight are worth three, if not four, after it; and he who frequently allows himself to remain at his studies after eleven o'clock in the evening, is probably laying up in store for himself bitter repentance. A late writer ascribes the excellent health and mental vigour of M. Guizot, while Minister of France under Louis Philippe, to his "prodigious faculty for sleep." After the most boisterous and tumultuous sittings at the Chambers, where he had been baited by the opposition in the most savage manner, he was accustomed to go home, throw himself

upon a couch, and fall immediately into a profound sleep, from which he was not disturbed till midnight, when proofs of the Moniteur were brought to him for inspection. It is well known that Henry Kirke White, Urquhart, and Henry Martyn, suffered at times from extreme depression of spirits, caused by an overtaxing of their mind, which occasioned the premature death of two, and probably abridged the life of the third. 66 'My discoveries," Henry Martyn says, "are all at an end, and I am just where I was, in perfect darkness!"—a fitting sequel to the paragraph in his diary by which it is preceded: "I scarcely know how this week has passed; I remember, however, that one night I did not sleep a wink. One discovery succeeded another so rapidly in Hebrew, Arabic, and Greek, that I was sometimes almost in ecstasy." What effect could be linked to a cause more closely and inseparably than were the collapse of soul he speaks of, with his habitual imprudence in the violation of well-known physical laws?

Many suffer great depression of spirits from