ness.

in stays, whatever the result may be. Yet these are not the days when ignorance can be pleaded as an excuse for such wrong-headed folly and wickedIt is obvious that the stay is an appurtenance of woman only when she has arrived at a state of full development; but then it should be divested of all the apparatus of busks and bones that frequently encumber it, and its main bearing should be limited to the upper half of the chest. The stay is, in reality, a support for the bust such is its purpose, such alone its intention. How very ludicrous it would appear to put it on boys! and yet boys have as much need of it as girls up to the period of womanhood, and I may say further, up to the period of marriage. But as stays form a staple article of female dress in this country, it may be well to point out their physiological action on the frame.

It is well known that the upper half of the trunk of the body, the chest, as it is properly termed, is constructed of a frame-work of twelve pairs of narrow bones, the ribs, which bend round from the spine behind to the breast-bone in front. These bones constitute the defence of the chief organs of the bodynamely, the heart, the lungs, the liver, and the stomach; the two former being above, the two latter below. Upon these bones are spread out certain muscles of respiration, and the muscles which support the spine; and the muscles are covered in by a layer of fat and by the skin. Muscles, it will be recollected, are the parts of the body termed flesh; they are red in colour, moderately firm, receive a large quantity of blood and many nerves, and are the agents by which motion is effected. Moreover, they possess the property of becoming large and firm with exercise, and small and soft, or flabby, from dis

the muscles become injuriously squeezed between the unyielding stay and the hard bones of the chest. As a consequence of this treatment, the circulation of blood through the muscles and the freedom of the nervous fluid is interrupted. If it could be seen when thus compressed, the muscle would be found pale and exsanguine, and being deprived of the quantity of blood necessary for its nutrition, much less its action, it becomes wasted, or, in technical language, atrophied. The muscles, then, by the use of stays, are weakened and rendered powerless, and the spine, at the growing period of life, is limited in its expansion and in its proper amount of muscular support. The consequence is inevitable; the spine sinks under the pressure of the superincumbent weight, or the child throws the pressure against one or the other side of the stay, and curved spine, or spinal disease, is established. How can it be otherwise? If we wished to produce curved spine, could we adopt a more scientific or certain plan? But stays are not the sole cause of curved spine, spinal disease, and deformity in girls and young women. Another cause is, insufficient food. The stomach, forsooth, must be schooled to a lady-like appetite; Nature is turned off as a dunce. Another cause is, insufficient clothing; and another, insufficient exercise. That horrid word, "lady-like," haunts the poor girls of the middle and higher classes through years which should be devoted to physical education, and leaves them at last the prey of deformity and disease. It may be wholesome to reflect that spinal deformity is scarcely known in schoolboys, and is almost universal in schoolgirls.

Since the publication of the first edition of this work, I have asked many ladies the use of stays. I obtained but one answer: "The stay gives us a roundness of waist which we could not otherwise attain." This is quite true: the natural waist is broader from side to side than from before backwards; in other words, it is slightly flattened. God has made us so; must we not say, wisely? dare we say, unbecomingly? What right, then, have we to dispute Nature's laws, and set up an idol for ourselves? What right to establish a

standard for the human form, as we would a fashionable shape for a bonnet or a coat? Or if, as adults, we persist in a right to mortify ourselves, let not our children be made sufferers for our sins. The truth is, that the round waist, being a distortion of the natural shape, is painful rather than agreeable to the eye of man.

One of the most inveterate pinchers among my lady acquaintance, who is, in reality, miserably distorted from the true standard of feminine perfection of form, and who has entailed upon herself, in consequence, a wretched state of health, adduces an argument in defence of stays, that I find too prevalent among women, and too mischievous in its tendency, to let pass without a reply. Her delusion is, that because the stays are not tightly laced, they cannot be hurtful; but to understand the true relation of stays to the health of the body, we must go back to the period when they were first used, namely, to the period of childhood. I have already shown that stays restrict the motions of the trunk of the body, and consequently set an immediate limit to the growth of the muscles, which become, in consequence, weak and powerless. Besides this, they prevent the growth and expansion of the chest, and by a gentle but continuous and daily-repeated resistance, they maintain the waist of the dimensions of childhood, while the rest of the body grows and enlarges into womanhood. A girdle of infancy is made to encircle the heart, the lungs, the stomach, and the liver of womanhood. And these important organs are constrained to seek accommodation in their narrow cell by mutual displacement. I could forgive the adoption of stays at adult age, and would sanction any amount of constriction the votaries of tight-lacing might think an improvement on nature: the process would be found too torturing to endure. That which I desire to see checked is, the detestable refinement of cruelty that begins the proceeding in infancy, before the intelligence of the child is sufficiently developed to resist this cruel infringement on woman's happiness and woman's health.

Fashion is the war-cry of tyranny, and some years ago it was the fashion

for women to appear with deformed bodies. Happily fashion has become more rational at the present day, and it is most sincerely to be hoped that British children will be educated, physically as well as morally, to perform the duties of British mothers. I have described the manner in which small waists and deformed spines may be made; I will now cite a parallel from the work of my friend, Mr. Tradescant Lay, entitled, "On the Chinese as they are." "At five," writes Mr. Lay, "the rich man's daughter has her foot so firmly bound, that, in the native phrase, the whole is killed. The foot, below the instep, is pressed into a line with the leg, to add to the height of the little sufferer, while two of the toes are bent under the sole, that its breadth may be only of the least dimensions. The agony of such a process it would be hard to estimate; but it is said to last about six weeks, when, I suppose, the wasting of all the parts, and the cessation of many of their functions, have rendered the whole insensible to pain. This insensibility to pain is perhaps confined to the outer parts, for the chief person belonging to the temple on the island of Honam stated that his sister suffered much anguish in the sole of the foot, or rather, in its lower and more central parts."

The exercise best adapted for the adult is walking and riding on horseback; and for the elderly, walking, and the more gentle exercise of riding in a carriage. Walking, when practised with a proper regard to the conditions mentioned in preceding paragraphs, bestows all the advantages which are to be derived from exercise. It favours digestion and nutrition, facilitates respiration, stimulates the skin, and promotes its action; increases the temperature of the body, and invigorates the physical and mental powers. Equestrian exercise offers similar advantages to those whose strength is unequal to walking a sufficient distance, or a sufficiently long time, to derive benefit, and is therefore peculiarly adapted for invalids or persons of a weakly constitution. The action of the skin is speedily excited by riding on horseback; an agreeable warmth is diffused over the entire body, and all the advantages of

LATIN AND LABOUR. Ir there is one thing more than another which Young Men ought to guard against, it is, moodiness and fitfulness, the surrender of themselves to whimsical frames and feelings. In such cases, their wisdom is resolutely to buckle too, and at once break the neck of the difficulty. Young men will often higgle longer about the thing, than they would do it ten times over. This holds especially in mastering any difficulty appertaining to language or to science. There is no comfort in doing that which is done with difficulty-a fact which supplies the lesson that it ought to be done, and done on and on, till it is done with Rush upon it, as the lion upon its prey, and devour it at once. knew a youth who set about learning Latin, and such was his provocation with the Verb, that he flung the Grammar on the floor, in the presence of his master, and resolved to have no more to do with it; but he took to it again, and in ten days completely mastered the whole Grammar, and committed to inemory not only all that was essential, but much more, and so soon ran beyond the classes with which he was successively united, that he required to be taught by himself.

ease.

We

John Adams, the second President of the United States, used to relate the following anecdote: "When I was a boy, I had to study the Latin Grammar; but it was dull, and I hated it. My father was anxious to send me to college, and therefore I studied the Grammar till I could bear it no longer; and going to my father, I told him I did not like study, and asked for some

his wishes, and he was quick in his answer. 'Well, John, if Latin Grammar does not suit you, you may try ditching; perhaps that will do. My meadow yonder needs a ditch, and you may put by Latin and try that.' seemed a delightful change, and to the meadow I went; but I soon found ditching harder than Latin, and the first forenoon was the longest I ever spent."

SHINE AND BE STILL.

This

QUIET and obscure witnesses for God are sometimes as important as those who operate more conspicuously, and with more noise. Few things, perhaps, give more uneasiness to inconsistent men, than the shining presence of those who adorn the doctrine of their Saviour. There are states into which backsliders sometimes fall, when remonstrance is thrown away upon them. The fact that they are frequently known to prefer this sort of treatment to that of a quiet, compassionate, standing protest, by a contrasted example, shows that it is an instrument calculated to tell better upon them than remonstrance, which is often like casting pearls before swine. Knowledge they need not; the evil is in the heart. There occurred some time ago, an example of this, which is worth rehearsal :

S. W. was a youth of nineteen, who maintained a close, consistent walk with God. Things were very dead in the church, and there had been no revival for years in the place. The youth who would have been his natural associates were imprudent, and in their social interviews engaged in such amusements as he considered inconsistent for a Christian. They invited him several

times to their parties, but he thought it wrong to dance and to waste his time in similar amusements: he declined their invitations. They gave him no credit for his integrity, but said that S. W. was of a cold, unɛocial temperament, possessing none of the common cheerful feelings of youth, while at the same time they knew better, and in their hearts respected him. Two or three years rolled away, when God heard the prayers of those who wept and prayed over this sad declension, and most of these youth became penitent, and embraced their Saviour. When they saw their sins, and became anxious about their souls, they all came to S. W. for instruction. As he was of an affable, social disposition, all could easily approach him, and his conduct had been so consistent while others had gone astray, that all had confidence in him. His words were as if an angel had spoken. He had been praying and reading his Bible while they had been dancing, and now, while he has been in other respects rewarded, he enjoys the highest respect and esteem of all.

DYING WORDS OF STERLING. THOSE of our Young-Men readers who have been casting their eyes upon the Journals for the last twelve months, have met more than once with the name of Sterling-a man of learning, originality, and patriotic genius. It was this gentleman's felicity, or misfortune, to possess more than an ordinary share of liberality upon all subjects affecting society and its institutions; and for this he has been visited with the calumny of bigots in the

Established Church, and his fair fame

has also been more or less bespattered by their unprincipled organs. The grave closed over that gentleman at an early period, and his Life came forth under the competent auspices of the Rev. Mr. Hare, whose beautiful biography has excited no little attention, from the justice he has done to his departed friend, and by which he has subjected himself to considerable obloquy. The piety of Sterling was doubted, and it cannot be denied that there are expressions in his works which might lead one to suspect the perfect soundness of his orthodoxy. But there is every reason to believe that, whatever deviations there may be in the way, he returned to the proper path in the end. When it became evident that his days were numbered, he began to provide for the coming issue, and in the conviction that he was soon to go, he said, "I thank the All-wise One." He wrote the following lines for his sister: "This is for you; you will care more for this: "Could we but hear all Nature's voice, From glow-worm up to sun,

'T would speak with one concordant sound,

'Thy will, O God, be done.' But, hark! a sadder, mightier prayer,

From all men's hearts that live: 'Thy will be done in earth and heaven,

And thou my sins forgive."

These were the last words he wrote. He murmured over the last two lines himself. As it grew dusk he appeared to be seeking for something, and on his sister asking what he wanted, said, "Only the old Bible which I used at Hurstmonceux in the cottages." In the night he grew worse; and before eleven o'clock the last struggle was over, and his spirit had departed.