tion, and nocturnal vigils, consume the vital spirits, weaken the powers, and bring on premature old age. Indolence and total inactivity, either of the corporeal or mental energies, are nevertheless equally to be avoided. Bacon has well expressed this where he says "the vital spirits must not be left to stagnate till they clog up their vessels; neither ought they to be wasted or so expended as to injure those vessels." Experience confirms incontestably the truth of this doctrine. It is proverbial, that children remarkable for precocity of intellect or acquirements die prematurely. Boerhaave knew a boy who was a miracle of erudition, but scarcely attained his fifteenth year. Another learned youth, who passed night and day in study, died in his nineteenth year without any previous illness, merely of premature age. Debauchery, not war, put an end to the life of Alexander the Great in the flower of manhood. Most of those who have exceeded the term of human longevity, were thoughtless, easy, insensible persons, who were in no hurry with the labour to which poverty doomed them, and strangers to all kinds of excesses. Such as have cultivated the sciences merely for their amusement, and opened their hearts only to the gentler passions, have in consequence attained advanced age. "Look you," says a writer of the last century, "at the old dames, who have lost all their teeth: let them relate to you their course of life, and they will tell you how merry they were in their youth: you will find that their anger dwells rather in the tongue than in the heart.

These have

enjoyed favourable gales, and have reached the haven where they would never have arrived either with a total calm, or with violent tempests. Whoever wishes to become old, must endeavour to resemble them in this point."

Go through the whole catalogue of excesses in pleasure, and you will find that they have precipitated their votaries into a premature grave. Boerhaave justly observed, that few who are intemperate in the use of wine, brandy, and other spiritous liquors, survive the age of fifty. With these votaries of Bacchus, the votaries of Venus proceed pari passu; and immediately after them come the immoderate eaters. Plato and Socrates grew old upon very frugal fare; and Maimonides, the Arabian physician, says, that it is necessary to avoid overloading the stomach with too much food: for though a person might take the most wholesome aliments, yet if he were to take too much of them, he could not remain in good health. Bread and water are an admirable diet for those who would rival Methusalem in longevity; and fasting itself is an excellent promoter of their views.

A regular way of life, in the most comprehensive sense of the term, is absolutely requisite for those who would flatter themselves with the hope of living to be old. They must live in a free, serene, and healthy air. That of high mountains is best suited to this object. In mountainous countries you meet with persons verging upon a century and a half, though living in poverty and subsisting on the coarsest fare. How much temperance in eating and drinking contributes to the attainment of old age, I shall have occasion to show hereafter by a variety of examples.

In respect to bodily exercise, I have already observed that it must be moderate, otherwise it will tend to abridge life. In this point, then, the system of life of those who wish to be old, differs a little from

that of the persons who merely desire to enjoy bodily strength and health in their best years. The object of the latter is promoted by violent exercise, for fatigues harden the body, but they also render the fibres rigid before the time, and too rapidly exhaust the vital spirits, the principle of life.

A due alternation of sleep and watching is an essential maxim for those who desire longevity. If you sleep too much, you collect a superabundance of juices; for sleep feeds the body more, if any thing, than alimentary substances. It is an indispensable rule for such as wish for long life, that they keep the body as nearly as possible of equal weight. Now, by rest it soon becomes heavier, and by fatigues it is rendered lighter. Both militate against the hope of long life.

Of the labours of the mind and of the passions I have already treated; and as to the natural evacuations, they must be constantly kept up, but on no account too strongly excited by the use of frequent or powerful medicines. "No cathartics are necessary," says Boerhaave; "for there are people of eighty who have never taken any, and yet, have always kept their bodies in a proper state." The same remark applies to all artificial evacuations, to blood-letting, perspiration, and the like. To attain advanced age, a man must enjoy uninterrupted health, for all diseases gnaw at the germ of life. If then the rules for regulating our mode of life in general enable us to avoid diseases, it follows of course, that we must observe all these rules if we would attain advanced age. It is most commonly the case, that people care too little about the future, to submit for the sake of it to the observance of so many rules: and yet there is no other way of becoming old than this. How, for instance, can a man expect to live long, if he injures the viscera, or suffers his juices to be tainted by a corruption which exposes him to a thousand dangers in his mortal pilgrimage! Boerhaave relates a remarkable instance in elucidation of this truth. A young man of a distinguished family, and of a melancholy temperament, fancied, without any cause, that the effects of youthful indiscretions were still lurking in his constitution. So strong was his conviction on this subject, that all the arguments of his physicians could not persuade him to the contrary. At length he found one-and why should he not meet with such a man?-who coincided in his opinion, and prescribed salivation. He submitted twice to this process, and after this cure of his imaginary disease, lived without ailment till his eightieth year, though none of his family had ever attained an advanced age. By this operation all the juices are cleansed, and whatever of impurity they contain is expelled from the system. Bacon first discovered that such a purification of the juices contributes greatly to longevity. He observes, that those medicines which consume all the juices of the body promote long life, if the viscera be but strong enough to concoct new and healthy juices from the new salutary aliments; otherwise, it would certainly be better to have bad juices than none at all.

Such are the most important points to be observed, by those who desire to attain an advanced age. There are few people who pursue this course, and most of those who are found there have struck into it by accident, or been driven thither by necessity. A small number indeed voluntarily choose this way, which keeps them aloof from the gratifications and indulgences of early life. It must not, however, be

very

imagined, that those who continue to be the slaves of their passions, are indifferent to length of life, or have voluntarily renounced the hope of enjoying it. This is far from being the case. The more pleasure we find in life, the more ardently we desire its prolongation. No man is more unwilling to die prematurely than the debauchee; none sighs more anxiously for length of years; none feels a greater horror of death, than he who knows not how to die well, which art consists solely in the consciousness of having lived well. As, however, the direct road to life is too dull and too arduous to such a person, he seeks the means of immortality in secret things, and hopes to find it in absurdities. Helmontius flattered himself with the expectation of discovering it by extracting the ens primum from the cedar of Mount Lebanon; because, forsooth, as the cedar is an almost imperishable tree, its juice or spirit must contain the essence of immortality! Paracelsus sought it in the herb of lung-wort, which was said to expel all bad juices from the body. Many others, equally silly, imagined that it was possible to extract from gold a spiritus rector, which would be a remedy for all diseases and a medium of immortality. Artephius caused a youth to be killed, and, as we are told, extracted from his blood the net of the human spirit, by means of which he attained a great age, and after he had become weary of life, laid himself down of his own accord in the grave, but not without taking along with him some of this volatile spirit in a bottle, to which he occasionally smells, merely to protract his life, which has now lasted upward of a thousand years. Others again have sought the means of immortality in animals; and the stag, on account of its longevity, has had the honour of being preferred by those fools, who fancied themselves possessed of the greatest wisdom. In short, there is nothing so ridiculous that has not been tried as a preservative against death; because the devisers of these experiments forgot that the human body is a machine, which, though it may have gone correctly for a long time, yet gradually decays, till at last its powers become completely exhausted. Is it, then, any wonder that not a single individual, out of all those who have invented elixirs of life and immortality, should have survived the ordinary age of man?

mag

MUSICAL WIVES.

"Omnibus hoc vitium est Cantatoribus." HORACE.

OH, that unfortunate walk by the river-side! But for that ill-fated excursion I might have enjoyed connubial happiness, of which there is now, alas! but little hope. Let me not, however, be mistaken. No whiskered officer of dragoons parading the beautiful promenade at Richmond, while music melted on the waves, and the setting sun threw its glowing light through the arches of the bridge upon the wooded hill beyond, has whispered soft nonsense in my lady's ear, and so possessed my imagination with the phantasmas of the green-eyed monster. No, I speak of a water-side stroll enacted some four or five thousand years ago by the Egyptian Mercury, the Hermes Trismegistus, or "thrice illustrious," who, wandering forth to enjoy the cool breezes of evening upon the banks of the Nile, after its periodical overflowing, and gazing intently on the ascending moon, struck his foot against the shell of a tortoise which had been left by the retiring flood, and was astonished at hearing a melodious sound. Stooping down to ascertain the cause of this phenomenon, he found that the flesh having been dried and wasted by the burning sun, nothing but the nerves and cartilages remained, which being braced and contracted by the heat, had become sonorous; and the idea of a lyre instantly started into his imagination. Constructing the instrument in the form of a tortoise, he strung it with the dried sinews of dead animals :-such, according to Apollodorus, was the origin of music; and this ominous ramble of the moon-gazing "thrice illustrious" was, consequently, the source of all my conjugal infelicity.

This is the age for accomplishments; but in the education of our females it may be doubted whether they be not too openly and exclusively invested with those graces and attractions which may best qualify them for the matrimonial market-as a certain schoolmistress advertised "to get up young ladies for the India department." In music this seems more especially perceptible. Tibullus could not now exclaim, "Ah! nimium faciles aurem præbere puellæ," for a modern damsel, instead of lending her own ear, is more prone to exclaim with Antony, "Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears," and sits herself down to a harpsichord to play con amore-for a husband. Brilliant fingers have superseded brilliant eyes; execution is performed by octaves not ogles; and hearts are literally carried by a coup de main. Holding a wax light instead of a torch, Hymen takes his post beside a book of canzonets;-Cupid bestriding the keys, with one foot upon a Flat, the other upon a Natural, takes a Sharp for his arrow, which he aims at the ear, not the heart, of his victim, and of course the greatest asses present the readiest and most open mark. It is painful to enroll oneself in this asinine brotherhood, yet candour obliges me to confess, that I suffered myself to be tamely caught by the auricular appendage, and led up to the hymeneal halter. My wife sang sweetly, played divinely, had brilliancy without noise, expression without affectation, science without pedantry, and many other things without many other things at least every body said so. I received the congratulations of my friends, and was the happiest of men for the full period of -a whole honeymoon.

Stradella, as all the world knows, saved his life by playing a tune to

VOL VII. NO. XXVI.

the bravos who were hired to assassinate him; but we are now become so much more musical, that I verily believe I should incur the fate which he avoided, were I even to attempt setting limits to the passion. What a dictionary of quotations should I draw down upon my devoted head! "Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast" and "The man that hath not music in his soul, &c." and a thousand others would be spouted forth against me, while I should in vain contend that I was deprecating the abuse, not the use of an art; that I might love any given pursuit without having a rage for it; and that however partial I may be to sweet voices, or sweet wines, I have no ambition to be sung to death, or smothered in a butt of malmsey. Alas! those who have ears for music have none for reason. After the first bustle of visiting, introductions, singing, playing, and admiration, I naturally concluded that we should subside into a little domestic quiet and self-possession, when I might calmly prosecute my studies, and enjoy my own fireside; but my wife's notions of enjoyment were so far from harmonizing with mine, that I found a da capo had commenced, and I was condemned to run through the same round of melodious misery. Since then, I have been in vain expecting a finale; "the cry is still they come;" fiddlers, singers, masters, and amateurs, besiege my house, and there is no end to my wife's parties, or my remonstrances. I find I have married a musician who perpetually reminds me of Dr. Pangloss's distinction between a concert and a consort, Accustomed to admiration, she cannot live without it, and her home becomes insipid, unless it is crowded with listeners and flatterers, and converted into an arena for display. I have no voice in my own house, because my wife has so much, and every body keeps time in it so rigorously, that I cannot find any for my own occupations. From morning to night I am distracted with harmony -my head seems to be a thoroughfare for crotchets, quavers, and semiquavers a common sewer, into which is disgorged a perpetual stream of noise, under every possible variety which the modulation of air can produce. Even in my sleep I have a constant singing in my head; the nerves of my brain, like an Æolian harp, vibrate of themselves; and if I dream, it is of the jarring, scraping, and tuning, of ten thousand in

struments.

Man has been defined, by physiologists, as a featherless biped, but I have been sometimes struck with the capricious contrast between the human and the winged subject. In peacocks, pheasants, and all the gallinaceous tribe, it is the male who is dressed out in gorgeous colours and fine feathers, while the female is as plain and unadorned as a quakeress. Singing-birds are all small, the blackbird being the largest ; there is no beaked Billington; and it is the gentleman who tunes his pipe while the domestic lady sits brooding over her eggs. Mine broods over nothing but the harpsichord, and my " callow nestlings of domestic bliss" are rondos, sonatas, and canzonettas. How can I expect her to be a good housekeeper, in any sense of the word? That left hand, so conversant in thorough-bass, would you desecrate it with a roll of tradesmen's bills? those dexter fingers, such volant summoners of sound, would you condemn them to a thimble and needle, or require them to handle any keys but those of the instrument? and that voice, “warbling immortal verse and Tuscan air," would you have the heart to bid it scold her servants and add up accounts?-None but a Goth or a Vandal would dream of such degradations, and yet I am ashamed to confess how much