Is the question of the air we breathe a slight matter, or one easily solved? Is the construction and health of our large towns, and their teeming populations, each individual with a claim on our sympathy, which cannot be over-estimated, a trivial thing, which is to be left to the doctors, the sanitarians, and those who busy their heads with these simple physical questions? A simple question truly, the false solution of which has entailed on us such an infinity of evils, such a labyrinth and abyss of miseries, that it will require the most strenuous untiring efforts of mankind for generations, with all the genius and self-devotion of the wisest and most persevering men, to enable us in part to escape. 'It will not be in a day, scarcely in a century, that men will recover from the contempt and neglect that have been shown to the body and all its requirements.

Besides the above mentioned means for ensuring a supply of fresh air in a town, every precaution should be taken to prevent its contamination by noxious elements. The most baneful and important of these in our large towns is the smoke, whether from private houses or from public works. This pollutes the air by poisonous gases, and still more by the small particles of coal and soot, so that the carbon enters into the very core of the citizens. No smoking factory should be tolerated in a large town; every one should be forced to consume its own smoke. Until this is done, there is no safety for any of the inhabitants, but more especially for the poorer classes, who dwell in the neighbourhood of these sooty giants, more pestilential than the dragons of old. Society should by common consent, enforce the consumption of the smoke, which could be easily accomplished, and should not rest till this be obtained. If they cannot afford to change these things, can they better afford to forfeit their own or their neighbours' lives by them? There is never a gain by that carelessness and want of attention, which neglects the laws of health in their full perfection. Whenever any individual's health or forces suffer, there is a dead loss in every way to society, as well as to himself, and the sin as well as the penalty must be shared by all.

None of the exhalations in a town, whether from graveyards or sewers, are, I believe, nearly so fatal to health as smoke; although the former also, are often very injurious, and should be carefully guarded against. But the smoke in some towns, especially in London, is ruinous to the health and strength of almost every one who dwells amid it. In this town, there are but few public factories, and the chief part of the smoke comes from private houses. Until this be got rid of, every human being who lives in London, will suffer more or less in health, and the whole race of its inhabitants must be deteriorated. It has been shown, I believe, to be perfectly practicable, by conducting the smoke from the different houses in each row into a common vent, and there consuming it, to prevent any of these deleterious sooty particles from escaping into the air. Scarcely anything would be of equal value to the town as such a measure, if universally adopted.

Much has been done of late years to improve the ventilation of the houses of the rich, and of those parts of public institutions, which are set apart for them. But how little in either respect has been done for the poor! How pestilential are the upper galleries of our theatres! How

many a fever and consumption might be traced to them! How wretched and unwholesome are the rooms of their own houses! How little has been done to make themselves feel the sovereign importance of fresh air, the religion and duty which they owe to their bodies! It is seldom that the women among the poorer classes in the large towns ever leave their houses, except on necessary errands, and when they thus become diseased, a constitutional walk is beyond the power of their medical adviser to obtain.

But religion and duty form but one part of our lives, not one whit superior in importance to others. A life guided by principle alone or chiefly, is an imperfect one, and by no means the ideal of humanity, which with its innate demand for freedom, cannot bear to feel itself the slave of laws, and is spoiled in its completeness and beauty by such a feeling.

Thus there should be inducements of pleasure, happiness, and spontaneous choice, to lead us along the paths of duty; and in the matter of air and exercise, it is not to be expected or desired, that man or woman should take them merely on principle or as a duty. They are too often prescribed as medicines, like the moral virtues, without means being taken to combine their benefits with the happy freedom of spontaneous choice, without which all medicines or duties are imperfect.

Therefore, constant habit from early infancy, teaching us to regard fresh air as a necessary of life; all manner of inducements and social pleasures linked with the idea of the open air, should combine with the recognition of our religious and dutiful relation to it, to make men eagerly seek after it, in every condition and circumstance of life.

There is another great reason of the awful degradation of our poor townsmen. It is the separation between them and the richer classes. Had there been any bond of union, any connection of intimacy, of friendship, of social enjoyment; any heart sympathy or understanding between them, could the unfortunate poor have got into such a wretched state? Had the foot of the wealthy often sought the streets, had it ever passed the threshold of the poor, and beheld the stifling squalor behind it, had his sympathies been mixed with those of his fellow-being in but an infinitesimal proportion of that amount which our common humanity demands, could these evils have remained so? No; it is in great part because the poor have been excluded from our friendship and sympathies, because we are class conventionalists, and not real men, because we have no communion with them at home or abroad, that there have arisen such miserable evils in their state. Neither physically nor morally, can the poor be sufficiently elevated, save by the habitual mingling among them, for mutual instruction and sympathy, of those who have more time and opportunity to cultivate their various faculties.

MENTAL DISEASE.

It is not yet sufficiently recognised, that the mind has its health and disease, exactly like the body, dependent on fixed natural laws. The term, mental disease, is restricted to insanity; but it must be viewed in a much wider sense, comprehending every case in which a mind suffers by erring against any natural law. If our thoughts and our feelings are in harmony with truth and nature, our minds will be healthy and happy; if not, they will be unhappy and diseased. Sorrow in the mind corresponds to pain in the body; wherever it is found it is a mark of sin and disease.

Whenever we observe, either in ourselves or in others, any grief, we may be certain that some evil is the cause of it. Happiness is the sign of moral health; it is one grand gaol for human aspiration, just as physical happiness or health is in the material world. Joy and sorrow are our guides to truth, showing us where we are right, and where wrong, in the exploration of our being. Wherever we find joy, we should seek the cause and follow it; wherever sorrow, the reverse is our duty.

But sorrow, in another light, may be regarded as a kind of good; thus having an exact analogy with bodily disease. It is now well known, that the body never works for its own destruction, but constantly for its preservation; and thus, that all disease is an effort of nature to regain health. Thus if a man receive a bodily injury-for instance, a blow, inflammation or pain will follow. These consequences constitute a disease; but still they are necessary for the restoration of the part to health; therefore they may be called a healthy disease.

In like manner let us analyse all the destructive processes of the most complicated forms of disease-of cancer, consumption, &c.; we will invariably find that all of them, though they are rapidly destroying life, are yet used and intended by nature to save it-one of the most wondrous and instructive paradoxes in our being. exactly the same way, sorrow, fear, and all the evil or diseased states of the mind, are nature's remedies for an injury received by it; and in their most unlimited and destructive developement we shall still invariably recognise the natural and necessary struggles for good, to

In

which man's nature, physical and moral, is essentially bent, like the plant to the light. Thus we feel sorrow naturally, for any calamity which befalls us, or those we love: this sorrow is always a disease in us; while it remains, we are in a state of imperfection, or sin, if you will. Still, without it, as in the case of the bodily inflammation, we could not be restored to our healthy equilibrium, and thus it may be called a healthy disease, or a good evil. The inflammation was a thing heartily to be deprecated and prevented; so was the

sorrow.

But the inflammation, or other bodily disease, may far overstep the limits necessary for the restoration of health; the injury received may have been too severe, or the constitution too feeble to resist it. The consequences may become themselves causes of new evils, and endanger the safety of the whole economy. In the same way the sorrow may pass all healthy bounds, and become itself the main cause of disease. The physician is always on the watch to see that the inflammation do neither more nor less than is necessary to restore health, and so must we watch over sorrow. If it become chronic and linger in the mind, we must use all means to eradicate it.

All the depressing and sorrow-causing passions and feelings are also diseases of the mind. Fear, jealousy, anxiety, or ennui, are all signs to us that there is evil somewhere, of which we must seek out the cause, however obscure, and remove it, before the suffering mind regain its health. Nay, more, every error in judgment, every untruth of thought is, like every untruth of bodily conduct, a cause of disease. The mind and the body are inseparably linked together, so that the health and happiness of the one involves that of the other. Thus if the mind be diseased by any of the evil moral states, the body will also become diseased; while all bodily disease equally necessitates a want of sanity of mind. Every imperfect moral state, at once reacts on the body, and if it be very intense, or long continued, the body will be deeply injured. Thus does our mental element play as important a part as any other, in the causation of physical disease, and to cure the latter it is just as often requisite to apply remedies to the mental, as the bodily state. To do this, we must first be able to recognise what is mental disease, and then to treat it according to the principles of mental health.

But men, in general, do not recognise moral disease, they do not allow sorrow, fear, &c., to be diseases; and instead of wishing, or feeling it their duty, to escape from them, often hug them to their bosoms and glory in them. There is as yet, scarcely any defined or tangible moral science; we think and feel according to the caprice of the hour, and when long-continued misery, arising from our ignorance of the laws of our mind, has involved us, body and soul, in ruin, we pride ourselves on our woes, and glory in our contempt of them! Truly this is carrying paradox rather too far. We say sorrow is good, for it chastens and elevates the mind, teaches it new lessons and sympathies, and gives it a loftiness and intensity of aspiration, which we should not have had without it. This may be true in some cases, but

SPIRITUALISM

ALTHOUGH 1 have already spoken on this subject in the first of these essays, yet it appears to me to be of such vital importance, that I would wish to add a few farther remarks.

By spiritualisin is to be understood the modes of thought and feeling, which seek to elevate mind above matter, and take a greater pleasure in mental than in physical pursuits, and in the cultivation of the moral than of the physical virtues.

Spiritualism is one of the most widely diffused of all diseased modes of feeling in the present day. It pervades the minds of almost all the educated classes in this country. If each of us, whether Christian or not, analyse our own thoughts and feelings, we shall find that we are deeply imbued with spiritualism; ingrained into us by our earliest education, and by the prevailing moral atmosphere around us. the educated classes instinctively prefer moral to physical excellencies, and aspire rather to the former than the latter.

All

To be a distinguished poet or thinker, to acquire renown by literary merits; to have a cultivated intellect, a warm heart, and deep sympathies-all of us aim at these, and regard with comparative indifference, if not contempt, the physical virtues of a powerful, athletic, and healthy frame, and the excellence in feats of bodily prowess. Little reverence is paid to these virtues, if possessed by any one, but all bow down in admiration before a man of superior mental powers. The tastes moreover of the great mass of the educated classes are thoroughly spiritual. Literary pursuits, intellectual enjoyments, poetry, morality, and spiritual religion, engross their attention; but the physical sciences, and bodily sports and exercises, have but little comparative interest for them, and the equal claims of the physical laws of life, to their study and religious obedience, are unfelt. The educated classes seem to think, that athletic frames and a keen relish for bodily exorcises and sports, are characteristics of the poorer classes, and that their own peculiar province is the cultivation of the mind and not of the body.

But there could not be a mistake more fatal to happiness or to the real culture of mankind. The consequence of this has been, that the two sets of virtues are rarely seen united in the same individual; but,