and utility must be founded, are left, perhaps unavoidably, to chance, to the customs of our parents, or the practices of our first college associates. All nature strives for life and for health: the smallest moss cannot be moved without disturbing myriads of living beings if any part of the animal frame is injured, the whole system is active in restoring it. But man is daily cut off or withered in his prime! Do we not, at the age of fifty, stand amidst the tombs of our early friends?

This subject has by Lord Bacon been thus divided: 1. The art of preserving health.

2. The cure of diseases..

3. The prolongation of life.

"Although the world, to a Christian travelling to the Land of Promise, be as it were a wilderness, yet that our shoes and vestments be less worn away while we sojourn in this wilderness is to be esteemed a gift coming from Divine Goodness." I please myself with the hope that, at some future time, it may not be thought beneath the dignity of our institutions * to

* Plutarch, in his Morals, says, "You have naturally a philosophical genius, and are troubled to see a philosopher have no kindness for the study of medicine. You are uneasy that he should think it concerns him more to study geometry, logic, and music, than to be desirous to understand whether the fabric of his body as well as his houses be well or ill designed. Now among all the liberal arts, medicine does not only contain so neat and large a field of pleasure as to give place to none, but plentifully pays the charges of those who delight in the study of her with health and safety so that it ought not to be called the transgression of the bounds of a philosopher to dispute about those things which relate to health."

secure a course of lectures, if not upon the general laws of preserving health, at least upon what are termed the non-naturals:

1. Air.

2. Aliment.

3. Exercise and rest.

4. Sleep and watchfulness.
5. Repletion and evacuation.
6. The passions as they
affect health.

There is, I understand, a class formed in one of the colleges in America "Upon the Art of Preserving Health;" and the Professor is now, I am told, going to Florence to purchase some Florentine models.

KNOWLEDGE OF THE UNDERSTANDING.

In the English universities there are not, excepting some occasional explanation of the nature of logic, any lectures upon the conduct of the understanding, which "seemeth like unto making an inventory of the estate of a defunct, when we set down of ready money nothing; for as money will fetch all other commodities, so all other knowledge is purchased by this knowledge."

KNOWLEDGE OF THE PASSIONS.

In the English universities there are not any lectures upon the passions. From the poets, from his-. torians, and from collision of opinion, we indirectly acquire some information of their nature and operation. The love of our country is taught, perhaps if only one mode is adopted best taught, in the midst of Troy's flames; and friendship, by Nisus eagerly sacrificing his own life to save his beloved Euryalus.

Without inquiring whether lectures upon these subjects would be beneficial or injurious,-with the

remembrance that Aristotle thought young men

"Unfit to hear moral philosophy.

The reasons they allege do more conduce
To the hot passion of distempered blood,

Than to make up a free determination

'Twixt right and wrong; for pleasure and revenge
Have ears more deaf than adders

To the voice of any true decision;

without inquiring whether a due estimate ought or ought not to be made of the nature of each passion, and the harmony which results from the exact and regular movement of the whole,-it may be well to remember that we embark upon our voyage without any direct instruction as to the tempests by which we may be agitated, by which so many, believing they are led by light from heaven, are wrecked and lost, and so few reach the true haven of a well-ordered mind,that temple of God which he graceth with his perfection and blesseth with his peace, not suffering it to be removed although the earth be removed, and although the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.

Upon the importance of a knowledge of our passions, philosophy, heathen and divine, is constant in its admonitions. Seneca says, "The grammarian's business lies in a syntax of speech; or if he proceed to history, or the measuring of a verse, he is at the end of his line. But what signifies a congruity of periods, the computing of syllables, or the modifying of numbers, to the taming of our passions or the repressing of our lusts? The philosopher proves the body of the sun to be large, but for the true dimensions of it we must ask the mathematician: geometry and music, if they do not teach us to master our

hopes and fears, all the rest is to little purpose. What does it concern us which was the elder of the two, Homer or Hesiod? or which was the taller, Helen or Hecuba? We take a great deal of pains to trace Ulysses in his wanderings; but were it not time as well spent to look to ourselves, that we may not wander at all? Are we not ourselves tossed with tempestuous passions? and both assaulted by terrible monsters on the one hand, and tempted by syrens on the other?

"You," says Lord Shaftesbury, "who are skilled in other fabrics and compositions, both of art and nature, have you considered of the fabric of the mind, the constitution of the soul, the connexion and frame of all its passions and affections, to know accordingly the order and symmetry of each part, and how it either improves or suffers? what its force is when naturally preserved in its sound state, and what becomes of it when corrupted and abused? Till this, my friend, be well examined and understood, how shall we judge either of the force of virtue or power of vice? or in what manner either of these may work to our happiness or undoing? Here, therefore, is that inquiry we should first make. But who is there can afford to make it as he ought? If, happily, we are born of a good nature; if a liberal education has formed in us a generous temper and disposition, well regulated appetites and worthy inclinations, 'tis well for us; and so, indeed, we esteem it. But who is there endeavours to give these to himself, or to advance his portion of happiness in this kind?

"Who thinks of improving, or so much as of preserving, his share in a world where it must of necessity

run so great a hazard, and where we know an honest nature is so easily corrupted? All other things relating to us are preserved with care, and have some art or economy belonging to them: this, which is nearest related to us, and on which our happiness depends, is alone committed to chance, and temper is the only thing ungoverned, whilst it governs all the rest. Thus we inquire concerning what is good and suitable to our appetites, but what appetites are good and suitable to us is no part of our examination. We inquire what is according to interest, policy, fashion, vogue; but it seems wholly strange, and out of the way, to inquire what is according to nature. The balance of Europe, of trade, of power, is strictly sought after ; while few have heard of the balance of their passions, or ever thought of holding these scales even."

"We all meditate," says Bishop Hall: “ one, how to do ill to others; another, how to do some earthly good to himself; another, to hurt himself under a colour of good. Or, perhaps, some better minds bend their thoughts upon the search of natural things,-the motions of every heaven, and of every star; the reason and course of the ebbing and flowing of the sea; the manifold kinds of simples that grow out of the earth, and creatures that creep upon it, with all their strange qualities and operations: or, perhaps, the several forms of government and rules of state take up their busy heads; so that while they would be acquainted with the whole world, they are strangers at home; and while they seek to know all other things, they remain unknown to themselves."

See note (N), ante.