256 MENTAL AND PHYSICAL EXERCISE. 



rising generation should possess proper conceptions with 

 respect to the arduous duties of the clerical office, and also 

 that our young men, who are destined to follow the pur- 

 suits of science, or literature, should at the commencement, 

 know the importance of habitually using so much corpo- 

 real exercise, as to prevent their falling into that nervous 

 and debilitated condition, under which but too many of 

 their brethren are now laboring. 



806. Sir Walter Scott. Sir Walter Scott, who pro- 

 duced in the course of little more than twenty-five years 

 seventy -four volumes of original romances, beside histo- 

 ries, poems, biographies, critiques, and dissertations, so 

 numerous, that so far as we know, their number has not 

 been computed, and who at the same period employed 

 many hours every day in other mental labors, still found 

 time to take a great deal of amusing muscular exercise. 

 Beside his dogs and gun, of which, being a capital shot, 

 he was exceedingly fond, and with which he exercised 

 himself with all the keenness and ardor of a first-rate 

 sportsman, he also, nearly every day in the season, did 

 something in the practice of cultivation, never taking a 

 walk about his grounds without a weeding or pruning 

 hook in his hand, thus always, even when most at leisure, 

 placing before himself some object of amusement, or mo- 

 tive of action. 



807. It is well known, that for a long time there was a 

 mystery with respect to the author of the Waverly Nov- 

 els, and it now appears that the apparently constant occu- 

 pation of Scott, as clerk of the sessions, and in other 

 employments, was considered as a sufficient reason why it 

 was not possible that he could have been their author. 

 " In order to thicken this mystification," says one of his 

 biographers, " Scott,' instead of being always at his wri- 

 ting-desk, as might have been expected in so voluminous 

 an author, seemed through the whole day and evening to 

 have his time perfectly at command, for the routine either 

 of business or amusement." " Three hours per diem" as 

 he often observed, " are quite enough for literary labor, if 

 only one's attention is kept so long undistr acted ; and the 

 best time for this is in the morning, when other people are 

 asleep." 



