LETTERS TO BROTHER JOHN. 215 



victims of this disease I mean the upper and mid- 

 dle orders, and such of the lower whose occupations 

 are sedentary when all this is considered, I say, 

 one is astonished, not that the health of the ma- 

 chine should suffer, but that it should continue 

 to exist at all. It seems really wonderful that 

 organs of such elaborate and delicate workmanship 

 should be able to perform their functions at all, under 

 circumstances so diametrically opposite as those of 

 action and inaction. Which of these two condi- 

 tions, however, is the better suited to the body, 

 daily and hourly experience shews; since robust 

 health, and great physical strength, are only to be 

 met with in the ranks of those who earn their 

 livelihood by bodily exertion ; and since that sickly 

 habit of body, concerning which I am speaking, is 

 solely incident to those whose lives arc inactive. 



Who ever heard of a bilious post-boy, or dys- 

 peptic ploughman ? It is not amongst carpenters, 

 and bricklayers, and sawyers, and agricultural 

 labourers, that you will meet with the dyspeptic; 

 but in the halls and saloons of the great, the dusky 

 counting-houses and gas-illumined shops of the 

 trader, and in the ghost-like and dwarfish ranks of 

 the pale and spectral silk-weaver. Indeed, of the 

 many hundreds of those who have come under my 



