4. "Consider', my friend', we are laboring too', The Hand works for you', friend', all the day long'; 6. The Foot, in reply, could find nothing to say, Anonymous, LESSON XX.-RULES FOR MENTAL EXERCISE. 1. Ar any time of life excessive and long-continued mental exertion is hurtful, but especially in infancy and early youth, when the structure of the brain is still immature and delicate. 2. While the healthy and backward boy may, without danger, be stimaulated to mental exertion, the delicate and precocious child needs constant mental restraint, and much, out-door exercise. 3. Cheerful feelings, as they exert an enlivening influence over the whole system, conduce greatly to a healthy activity of the brain, and increase its power for exertion. 4. The growing child requires more sleep than the adult; and the close student more than the idler. In proportion as mental excitement is opposed to sleep, it exhausts the body. 5. The length of time the brain may be safely used is modified by many circumstances, such as those of age, mental habits, health of the brain,, and health of the system. If the brain has long been habituated to profound study, it will not be so soon fatigued as when its habits have been indolent. 6. The brain finds relief from exhaustion in frequent change of studies and occupation. The early part of the day, when the exhausted energies of body and mind have been restored by repose, is the best time for study. 7. As quiet of the brain is essential to quiet sleep', active study should cease some time before retiring to rest. 8. We should not enter upon continued mental exertion', or arouse deep feeling, immediately before or after violent muscular exercise. 9. Moderate mental exertion is more necessary in old age than in mature years. In middle life, while the body is gaining strength, the exhaustion of the brain from overexcitement may be repaired; but no such result follows overexertion in the decline of life. The current history of the day furnishes numerous sad examples of premature death from overtasked brains at an advanced period of life. 10. The physical, intellectual, and moral faculties should receive, daily, their appropriate share of culture, that all may grow in harmony together. Just in proportion as mind is cultivated in some one direction only, the result is that species of monomania which we see in men of one idea; and when the physical alone is cultivated, we have the mere bully or bravado. 11. When the brain is overcharged with blood, as often occurs from too great mental exertion, or from disease or accident, the most ready and safe means of relief is to make warm applications to the feet and hands, which will tend to draw the blood from the brain to the extremities. 12. Exercise is as natural to the mind as to the body; hence all healthy children delight in constant mental occupation; and if they can not obtain it in judicious mental culture and honest employment, they will be apt to seek it in the haunts of dissipation, and perhaps in those of crime. It is a physiological as well as a moral truth, that "Idleness is the parent of vice;" and it is no less the teaching of physiology than of experience, that, if we will not educate the ignorant, we may expect to support them as paupers or criminals. LESSON XXI.-ADVICE TO A HARD STUDENT. 1. STILL vary thy incessant task, As if thy life were thing of earth- Alternate' with thy honest work Though toil be just', though gold' be good', 2. Take pleasure for thy limbs at morn'; Converse to-night with moon and stars'; Cull garlands in the fields and bowers, 3. If in the wrestlings of the mind A gladiator strong', Give scope and freedom to thy thought- Climb to the mountain-top serene, And let life's surges beat, With all their whirl of striving men, Far, far beneath thy feet. 4. But stay not ever on the height, Come down betimes to tread the grass, Come down betimes to rub thy hands At the domestic hearth';3 Come down to share the warmth of love', And join the children's mirth'. 5. Let love of books', and love of fields', To feed in turns thy mental life, Till every string on Being's lyre Give forth its music due.-CHARLES MACKAY. 1 AL-TER'-NĀTE, or ĂL'-TER-NATE, to ex-13 HEÄRTH (hārth). This is the approved change; perform by turns. 2 RI-FLE, seize and bear away. pronunciation, although the writer, above, makes it rhyme with mirth. LESSON XXII.-NEGLECT OF HEALTH. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 1. THERE is among the fragments of the Greek poets a short hymn to Health, in which her power of exalting the happiness of life, of heightening the gifts of fortune, and adding enjoyment to possession, is inculcated with so much force and beauty that no one, who has ever languished under the discomforts and infirmities of a lingering disease, can read it without feeling the images dance in his heart, and adding, from his own experience, new vigor to the wish, and from his own imagination new colors to the picture. The particular occasion of this little composition is not known, but it is probable that the author had been sick, and in the first raptures of returning vigor addressed Health in the following manner: 2. Health, most venerable of the powers of heaven! with thee may the remaining part of my life be passed, nor do thou refuse to bless me with thy residence. For whatever there is of beauty or of pleasure in wealth, in descendants, or in sovereign command, the highest summit of human enjoyment, or in those objects of human desire which we endeavor to chase into the toils of love; whatever delight, or whatever solace is granted by these celestials, to soften our fatigues, in thy presence, thou parent of happiness, all those joys spread out, and flourish; in thy presence blooms the spring of pleasure, and without thee no man is happy." 3. Such is the power of health, that without its co-operation every other comfort is torpid and lifeless, as the powers of vegetation without the sun. And yet this bliss is often thrown away in thoughtless negligence, or in foolish experiments on our own strength; we let it perish without remembering its value, or waste it to show how much we have to spare; it is sometimes given up to the management of levity and chance, and sometimes sold for the applause of jollity and debauchery. 4. Health is equally neglected, and with equal impropriety, by the votaries of business and the followers of pleasure. Some men ruin the fabric of their bodies by incessant revels, and others by intemperate studies; some batter it by excess, and others sap it by inactivity. Yet it requires no great ability to prove that he loses pleasure who loses health; and that health is certainly of more value than money, because it is by health that money is procured, and by health alone that money is enjoyed. 5. 6. 7. Nor love, nor honor, wealth, nor power, Ah! what avail the largest gifts of Heaven, Soon swallowed in disease's sad abyss, While he whom toil has braced, or manly play, Has light as air each limb, each thought as clear as day. Oh, who can speak the vigorous joy of health- Yet what but high-strung health this dancing pleasure breeds.-THOMSON. 8. Health is indeed so necessary to all the duties, as well as pleasures of life, that the crime of squandering it is equal to the folly; and he that for a short gratification brings weakness and diseases upon himself, and for the pleasure of a few years passed in the tumults of diversion and clamors of merriment condemns the maturer and more experienced part of his life to the chamber and couch, may be justly reproached, not only as a spendthrift of his own happiness, but as a robber of the public-as a wretch that has voluntarily disqualified himself for the business of his station, and refused that part which Providence assigns him in the general task of human nature. LESSON I. THE VILLAGE SCHOOL OF OLDEN TIME. [The reading of this inimitable piece of description, in which the most delicate satire is conveyed under the guise of profound admiration, requires, especially in the third verse, the ironical tone of mock laudation and respect.] 1. Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way 2. A man severe he was', and stern to view'; |