6 



they create habits of bodily indolence, and the 

 scholar, when emancipated from the dominion of his 

 instructers, and invested with the command of his 

 own time, carries with him a fondness for sedentary 

 amusements. Consequently, if his business should 

 be also of a sedentary character, his whole life, ivhile 

 it lasts, is one of close confinement. At any rate, 

 the debilitated health of many of our most distin- 

 guished professional men, has long been a subject of 

 the deepest public concern ; and to no cause does the 

 evil seem to be more imputed, than to their neglect 

 of habitual exercise. Why else is it that our clergy- 

 men are so often driven from the desk, and our law- 

 yers interrupted in the midst of their most intense 

 and important labors, while our physicians, the only 

 class of professional men, who are compelled to pass 

 much of their time in bodily motion, are proverbially 

 healthy, — and it is no rare spectacle to see them dis- 

 pensing, in their own case, with the rules, which they 

 feel it their duty to prescribe to others. That amuse- 

 ment, then, is certainly to be highly valued, which 

 calls us forth into the open air, during a large portion 

 of the year, and by its double operation on the body 

 and mind, contributes at once to our strength and 

 spirits — two objects which it needs no physician to 

 inform us are most nearly connected. 



It is, therefore, a highly gratifying fact, that the 

 directors of several of our literary and theological 

 institutions, have labored to inspire their students 

 with a taste for gardening, and have furnished them 

 with every facility for its cultivation. For, however 

 incontestible the value of exercise, every one knows, 



