262 INFLURNCE OF THE BRAIN ON HEALTH. 



for, his labours being generally unnoticed, or their 

 results unappreciated, he is left without much en- 

 couragement to proceed in fresh endeavours to 

 excel ; while his faculties, instead of improving, through 

 generous exercise, are often deteriorated by the languid 

 manner in which they are brought into play." (p. 6.) 



Captain Hall justly observes, that the influence of 

 the commander on men of moderate talents is still 

 more striking, as they stand more in need of a stim- 

 ulus to duty. " If a commander has skill enough to 

 enlist the sympathies of those placed under his or- 

 ders, they will feel insensibly drawn on to make 

 common cause with him, and will afterward exert 

 themselves strenuously to maintain that degree of 

 importance derived from this implied companionship 

 in ability which they could hardly hope to reach 

 single-handed." *' The invariable effect of these 

 efforts is to improve the character. Such training 

 will certainly not make a clever man out of a stupid 

 one ; but it may often render a discontented or use- 

 less man of service to himself and the state : and, 

 instead of his continuing a wretched and hopeless 

 being, may convert him into one who is happy and 

 confident of success." 



" I suspect, however, that no one who has not been 

 an eye-witness of the condition of a ship under the 

 command of an ignorant, trifling, or otherwise inef- 

 ficient captain, can have any notion of the mischiev- 

 ous effects of his misrule, or rather of his no rule. 

 Perhaps, in the long-run, almost every degree of con- 

 sistent severity is preferable to the uncertain, hig- 

 gledy-piggledy kind of discipline on board a man-of- 

 war in what is called slack-order. The moderately 

 gifted persons feeling that, in these circumstances, 

 they have no chance of notice by any exertions of 

 their own, speedily degenerate into a sort of vege- 

 tables, so incapable of any useful exertion that they 

 infest the ship like the fungus called the dry-rot. 

 This chaotic period is the holyday season of the 



