THE MANSE GARDEN. 53 



cient occupation, whilst it keeps you a good portion 

 of every dry day out of doors. Your profession is 

 of a nature that cannot maintain a healthful subsist- 

 ence without having the body kept in motion from 

 two to four hours a-day and all that time bathed in 

 the free,^open air of heaven ; and neither will your 

 mind work to good purpose on serious subjects with- 

 out frequent recourse to such as are light and recre- 

 ating. Languor, debility, and a quick decay of the 

 digestive organs, are inevitably superinduced by a 

 contrary treatment ; and whoever, on the appearance 

 of such symptoms, has recourse to other stimulants 

 than those of air and exercise, in order to help on 

 the flagging powers of vitality, sows that moment 

 the seeds of some mortal disease, under the suffering 

 of which he cannot say that he -is guiltless of his 

 own blood. 



Such unnatural stimulus is to the body what en- 

 thusiasm in religion is to the mind; and thay who, 

 forsaking the salutary use of the divine Word, can 

 be pleased only with fanatical excitement, must soon 

 fall from their giddy height, and have themselves to 

 blame for all the melancholy and moping idiocy which 

 consequently ensue. Every artificial stimulus, whe- 

 ther in mind or body, is followed by a periodical 

 Jowness, causing, in spiritual things, the gloom of 

 despair, and in bodily, a wretchedness which can 

 find no relief but by the exciting drug, which, on 

 every fresh application, adds fuel to the flame it has 

 already kindled. There is no misery like this to 

 be a self-destroyer, and yet to shrink from the ap- 

 proaching catastrophe ; and the more, it is feared, to 

 hasten it the more. And this is a state of being 



