67 A WORD ON EARLY RISING. S we are writing this article before breakfast, at an earlier hour than usual, we are inclined to become grand and intolerant on the strength of our virtue, and to look around us, and say, "Why is not everybody up? How can people lie in bed at an hour like this, 'the cool, the fragrant'?" "Falsely luxurious, will not man awake?" Thus exclaimed good-natured, enjoying Thomson, and lay in bed till twelve; after which he strolled into his garden at Richmond, and ate peaches off a tree, with his hands in his waistcoat-pockets! Browsing! A perfect specimen of a poetical elephant or rhinoceros ! Thomson, however, left an immortal book behind him, which excused his trespasses. What excuse shall mortality bring for hastening its end by lying in bed, and anticipating the grave? for, of all apparently innocent habits, lying in bed is perhaps the worst; while, on the other hand, amidst all the different habits through which people have attained to a long life, it is said that in this one respect, and this only, they have all agreed, no very long-lived man has been a late riser! Judge Holt is said to have been curious respecting longevity, and to have questioned every very old man that came before him, as to his modes of living; and in the matter of early rising there was no variation : every one of them got up betimes. One lived chiefly upon meat, another upon vegetables; one drank no fermented liquors, another did drink them; a fifth took care not to expose himself to the weather, another took no such care: but every one of them was an early riser. All made their appearance at Nature's earliest levee; and she was pleased that they hailed her as soon as she waked, and that they valued her fresh air, and valued her skies, and her birds, and her balmy quiet: or, if they thought little of this, she was pleased that they took the first step in life, every day, calculated to make them happiest and most healthy; and so she laid her hands upon their heads, and pronounced them good old boys, and enabled them to run about at wonderful ages, while their poor senior juniors were tumbling in down and gout. A most pleasant hour it is certainly, when you are once up. The birds are singing in the trees; every thing else is noiseless, except the air, which comes sweeping every now and then through the sunshine, hindering the coming day from being hot. We feel it on our face as we write. At a distance, far off, a dog occasionally barks; and some huge fly is loud upon the window-pane. It is sweet to drink in at one's ears these innocent sounds, and this very sense of silence, and to say to one's self, "We are up, we are up, and are doing well: the beautiful creation is not unseen and unheard for want of us." digious moment when the vanity and the virtue can go together. We shall not say how early we write this article, lest we should appear immodest, and excite Oh! it's a pro envy and despair. Neither shall we mention how often we thus get up, or the hour at which we generally rise, leaving our readers to hope the best of us; in return for which, we will try to be as little exalted this morning as the sense of advantage over our neighbors will permit, and not despise them, a great stretch for an uncommon sense of merit. There, for instance, is C.,-hard at it, we would swear; as fast asleep as a church. Of what value are his books now, and his subtleties, and his speculations? as dead, poor man! as if they never existed. What proof is there of an immortal soul in that face with its eyes shut, and its mouth open, and not a word to say for itself, any more than the dog's? And W. there, what signifies his love for his children and his garden, neither of which he is now alive to, though the child-like birds are calling him, hopping amidst their songs; and his breakfast would have twice the relish? And the L.'s with their garden and their music?- the orchard has all the music to itself: they will not arise to join it, though. Nature manifestly intends concerts to be of a morning as well as evening, and the animal spirits are the first that are up in the universe. Then the streets and squares. Very much do we fear, that, for want of a proper education in these thoughts, the milkman, instead of despising all these shut-up windows, and the sleeping incapables inside, envies them for the riches that keep injuring their diaphragms and digestions, and that will render their breakfast not half so good as his. "Call you these gentle-folks?" said a new maid-servant, in a family of our acquaintance: "why, they get up early in the morning! Only make me a lady, and see if I wouldn't lie abed." Seriously speaking, we believe that there is not a wholesomer thing than early rising, or one which, if persevered in for a very little while, would make a greater difference in the sensations of those who suffer from most causes of ill-health, particularly the besetting disease of these sedentary times, — indigestion. We believe it would supersede the supposed necessity of a great deal of nauseous and pernicious medicine, that pretended friend, and ultimately certain foe, of all impatient stomachs. Its utility in other respects everybody acknowledges, though few profit by it as they might. Nothing renders a man so completely master of the day before him; so gets rid of arrears, anticipates the necessity of haste, and insures leisure. Sir Walter Scott is said to have written all his greatest works before breakfast: he thus also procured time for being one of the most social of friends, and kind and attentive of correspondents. One sometimes regrets that experience passes into the shape of proverbs, since those who make use of them are apt to have no other knowledge, and thus procure for them a worldly character of the lowest order. Franklin did them no good, in this respect, by crowding them together in "Poor Richard's Almanack ;" and Cervantes intimated the commonplace abuse into which they were turning, by putting them into the mouth of Sancho Panza. Swift completed the ruin of some of them, in this country, by mingling them with the slip-slop of his "Polite Conversation," a Tory libel on the talk of the upper ranks, to which nothing comparable is to be - found in the Whig or Radical objections of modern times. Yet, for the most part, proverbs are equally true and generous; and there is as much profit for others as for a man's self in believing that "early to bed and early to rise will make a man healthy and wealthy and wise:" for the voluntary early riser is seldom one who is insensible to the beauty as well as the uses of the spring of day; and in becoming healthy and wise, as well as rich, he becomes good-humored and considerate, and is disposed to make a handsome use of the wealth he acquires. Mere saving and sparing (which is the ugliest way to wealth) permits a man to lie in bed as long as most other people, especially in winter, when he saves fire by it; but a gallant acquisition should be as stirring in this respect as it is in others, and thus render its riches a comfort to it, instead of a means of unhealthy care and a preparation for disappointment. How many rich men do we not see jaundiced and worn, not with necessary care, but superfluous; and secretly cursing their riches, as if it were the fault of the money itself, and not of the bad management of their health? These poor, unhappy, rich people come at length to hug their money out of a sort of spleen and envy at the luckier and less miserable poverty that wants it, and thus lead the lives of dogs in the manger, and are almost tempted to hang themselves; whereas, if they could purify the current of their blood a little, which, perhaps, they might do by early rising alone, without a penny for physic, they might find themselves growing more patient, more cheerful, more liberal, and be astonished and delighted at receiving the praises of the commu |