IF

TO ANY ONE WHOM BAD WEATHER

DEPRESSES.

F you are melancholy for the first time, you will find upon a little inquiry that others have been melancholy many times, and yet are cheerful now. If you have been melancholy many times, recollect that you have got over all those times; and try if you cannot find out new means of getting over them better.

Do not imagine that mind alone' is concerned in your bad spirits. The body has a great deal to do with these matters. The mind may undoubtedly affect the body; but the body also affects the mind. There is a mutual reaction between them; and by lessening it on either side, you diminish the pain on both.

If you are melancholy, and know not why, be assured it must arise entirely from some physical weakness; and do your best to strengthen yourself. The blood of a melancholy man is thick and slow. The blood of a lively man is clear and quick. Endeavour, therefore, to put your blood in motion. Exercise is the best way to do it; but you may also help yourself, in moderation, with wine, or other excitements. Only you must take care so to proportion the use of any artificial stimulus, that it may not render the blood languid by over-exciting it at first; and that you may be able to keep up, by the natural stimulus only, the help you have given yourself by the artificial.

Regard the bad weather as somebody has advised us to

handle the nettle.

In proportion as you are delicate with it, it

will make you feel; but

"Grasp it like a man of mettle,

And the rogue obeys you well."

Do not the less, however, on that account, take all reasonable precaution and arms against it, your boots, &c., against wet feet, and your great-coat or umbrella against the rain. It is timidity and flight which are to be deprecated, not proper armour for the battle. The first will lay you open to defeat on the least attack. A proper use of the latter will only keep you strong for it. Plato had such a high opinion of exercise that he said it was a cure even for a wounded conscience. Nor is this opinion a dangerous one. For there is no system, even of superstition, however severe or cruel in other matters, that does not allow a wounded conscience to be curable by some means. Nature will work out its rights and its kindness some way or other, through the worst sophistications; and this is one of the instances in which she seems to raise herself above all contingencies. The conscience may have been wounded by artificial or by real guilt; but then she will tell it in those extremities that even the real guilt may have been produced by circumstances. It is her kindness alone which nothing can pull down from its predominance.

See fair play between cares and pastimes. Diminish your mere wants as much as possible, whether you are rich or poor; for the rich man's wants, increasing by indulgence, are apt to outweigh even the abundance of his means; and the poor man's diminution of them renders his means the greater. Do not want money, for instance, for money's sake. There is excitement in the pursuit; but it is dashed with more troubles than most others, and gets less happiness at last. On the other hand, increase all your natural and healthy enjoyments. Cultivate your afternoon fireside, the society of your friends, the company of agreeable children, music, theatres, amusing books, an urbane and generous gallantry. He who thinks any innocent

pastime foolish, has either yet to grow wiser, or is past it.

In

the one case, his notion of being childish is itself a childish notion. In the other, his importance is of so feeble and hollow a cast, that it dare not move for fear of tumbling to pieces.

A friend of ours, who knows as well as any man how to unite industry with enjoyment, has set an excellent example to those who can afford the leisure, by taking two Sabbaths every week instead of one ;-not Methodistical Sabbaths, but days of rest which pay true homage to the Supreme Being by enjoying his creation. He will be gratified at reading this paragraph on his second Sunday morning [Wednesday].

One of the best pieces of advice for an ailing spirit is to go to no sudden extremes,—to adopt no great and extreme changes in diet or other habits. They may make a man look very great and philosophic to his own mind, but they are not fit for a nature to which custom has been truly said to be a second nature. Dr Cheyne (as we remember reading on a stall) may tell us that a drowning man cannot too quickly get himself out of the water; but the analogy is not good. If the water has become a second habit, he might almost as well say that a fish could not get too quickly out of it.

Upon this point Bacon says that we should discontinue what we think hurtful by little and little. And he quotes with admiration the advice of Celsus, that “ a man do vary and interchange contraries, but with an inclination to the more benign extreme." "Use fasting,” he says, "and full eating, but rather full eating; watching and sleep, but rather sleep; sitting and exercise, but rather exercise; and the like. So shall nature be cherished, and yet taught masteries."

We cannot do better than conclude with one or two other passages out of the same Essay, full of his usual calm wisdom. "If you fly physic in health altogether, it will be too strange for your body when you need it." (He means that a general state of health should not make us over-confident and contemptuous of physic, but that we should use it moderately if required, that

it may not be too strange to us when required most.) "If you make it too familiar, it will have no extraordinary effect when sickness cometh. I commend rather some diet for certain seasons, than frequent use of physic, except it be grown into a custom, for those diets alter the body more, and trouble it less."

"As for the passions and studies of the mind," says he, "avoid envy, anxious fears, anger, fretting inwards, subtle and knotty inquisitions, joys and exhilarations in excess, sadness not communicated" (for, as he says finely somewhere else, they who keep their griefs to themselves, are "cannibals of their own hearts"). "Entertain hopes; mirth, rather than joy" (that is to say, cheerfulness rather than what we call boisterous merriment); "variety of delights, rather than surfeit of them; wonder and admiration, and therefore novelties; studies that fill the mind with splendid and illustrious objects, as histories, fables, and contemplations of nature."

Ο

THE OLD GENTLEMAN.

UR Old Gentleman, in order to be exclusively himself, must be either a widower or a bachelor. Suppose the former. We do not mention his precise age, which would be invidious; nor whether he wears his own hair or a wig, which would be wanting in universality. If a wig, it is a compromise between the more modern scratch and the departed glory of the toupee. If his own hair, it is white, in spite of his favourite grandson, who used to get on the chair behind him, and pull the silver hairs out, ten years ago. If he is bald at top, the hair-dresser, hovering and breathing about him like a second youth, takes care to give the bald place as much powder as the covered; in order that he may convey to the sensorium within a pleasing indistinctness of idea respecting the exact limits of skin and hair. He is very clean and neat; and in warm weather is proud of opening his waistcoat half way down, and letting so much of his frill be seen, in order to show his hardiness as well as taste. His watch and shirt-buttons are of the best; and he does not care if he has two rings on a finger. If his watch ever failed him at the club or coffee-house, he would take a walk every day to the nearest clock of good character, purely to keep it right. He has a cane at home, but seldom uses it, on finding it out of fashion with his elderly juniors. He has a small cocked hat for gala days, which he lifts higher from his head than the round one, when made a bow to. In his