78 EVOLUTION [CHAP. II 



Letter 37 To J. D. Hooker. 



Down, [May] 29th, 1854. 



I am really truly sorry to hear about your [health]. 

 I entreat you to write down your own case, symptoms, 

 and habits of life, and then consider your case as that of 

 a stranger ; and I put it to you, whether common sense 

 would not order you to take more regular exercise and work 

 your brain less. (N.B. Take a cold bath and walk before 

 breakfast.) I am certain in the long run you would not lose 

 time. Till you have a thoroughly bad stomach, you will not 

 know the really great evil of it, morally, physically, and every 

 way. Do reflect and act resolutely. Remember your 

 troubled heart-action formerly plainly told how your con- 

 stitution was tried. But I will say no more excepting that 

 a man is mad to risk health, on which everything, including 

 his children's inherited health, depends. Do not hate me for 

 this lecture. Really I am not surprised at your having some 

 headache after Thursday evening, for it must have been no 

 small exertion making an abstract of all that was said after 

 dinner. Your being so engaged was a bore, for there were 

 several things that I should have liked to have talked over 

 with you. It was certainly a first-rate dinner, and I enjoyed 

 it extremely, far more than I expected. Very far from 

 disagreeing with me, my London visits have just lately 

 taken to suit my stomach admirably ; I begin to think that 

 dissipation, high-living, with lots of claret, is what I want, and 

 what I had during the last visit. We are going to act on 

 this same principle, and in a very profligate manner have 

 just taken a pair of season-tickets to see the Queen open the 

 Crystal Palace. 1 How I wish there was any chance of your 

 being there ! The last grand thing we were at together 

 answered, I am sure, very well, and that was the Duke's 

 funeral. 



Have you seen Forbes' introductory lecture 2 in the 

 Scotsman (lent me by Horner) ? it is really admirably done, 

 though without anything, perhaps, very original, which could 



1 Queen Victoria opened the Crystal Palace at Sydenham on 

 June loth, 1854. 



: Edward Forbes was appointed to a Professorship at Edinburgh in 

 May, 1854. 



