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

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

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

shall we say, because good has come out of evil, that the evil itself is good? Let us take the parallel case of bodily suffering, of which too many of us have had so sad experience.

To have passed through a long and tedious illness, may have given us some insight into the mysteries of humanity, that would else have been hid from us, may have purified our hearts and intensified our love and sympathy for our fellow-beings; but for all these blessings, however dear to us, and however loath we should be to part with them, can we say that the bodily disease which caused them, was not of itself an evil to be shunned and prevented in every possible way? The more we have suffered from it, and therefore the stronger influence it has had in moulding, possibly in some respects for good, our moral character, the more earnestly will we seek to prevent any human being again suffering, as we have done. What else is the value and consolation of experience? It is not the disease, not the sorrow, which is good, but the power we may have gained by it, to serve our fellow-beings, and to give them the fruits without the thorns of our experience.

But if some gain, in a measure, by sorrow and disease, how many lose utterly! What shall all his experience avail a man, if he is destroyed before he can use it, or if he be not conscious of its value, as is so often the case? Who does not feel on looking back on his life, that all its sufferings, physical and mental, arose from evil causes, that the beauty of his life is dimmed by every one of them, and that he might have been a far better and higher being, had they been all removed?

The physician's powers to save, are in great measure based on his acquaintance with disease: nay, unless there had been disease, he could not even understand health; but does he on that account wish to see disease in himself or in others? It is even so with the moralist too; without his knowledge of and sympathy with sorrow, and his experience of its causes, he cannot benefit the sufferer; but shall he on that account, desire to see sorrow that he may alleviate it? Every bodily disease in ourselves and others, takes away from the perfection of our common life; so does every sorrow that we may undergo, detract from the beauty and integrity of our moral nature. He that sorrows for others, confesses that he joins in the common lot and common imperfection of mankind; for we are so linked together, that if one suffer, all must suffer. There is no such thing as necessary, or therefore essentially beneficial, bodily disease; there is no such thing as necessary, or essentially beneficial sorrow. Therefore a man of sorrows must be a diseased, and cannot be an absolutely good man. The ideal of a perfect life, physical and moral, that to which humanity should aspire, is one that knows not disease or sorrow.

Any one, who has suffered bodily, or mentally, and who has not? will say, "Be not like me, I am sinful; whatever experience I may have got, my life is a blemished one, and the one character to which you should aspire, is that which is not tainted by disease or sorrow. There is none good but one, and that is the unattainable ideal, undimmed by the sorrows and sufferings of imperfection."

If it be asked, how do we know that sorrow is a disease or an evil? the answer is, by observing its effects on the body. The human body is the touchstone of moral truth, its health or disease istangible, and demonstrable; and through its means alone, do moral questions admit of full demonstration. We see that joy and all the allied feelings are linked most closely with physical health and well-being; whereas sorrow and all its ministers, cause derangement and ill health of the bodily functions, in a measure exactly proportional to their intensity and continuance. They interfere with the healthy performance of nutrition, reproduction, or secretion; under their influence the stomach becomes disordered, the bodily powers enfeebled, and if sorrow be much aggravated or prolonged, the sanity of the mind as well as the body may be completely destroyed.

If we have not a true idea of what is health and what disease, it is in vain to expect to attain the one or avoid the other. The physician of mind or body cannot cure a man if there be a disease lurking in the system, which is not recognised, and which may yet be at the bottom of all the symptoms. Thus, how often do we see vain attempts made to cure by physical remedies, diseases-as indigestion, debility, &c., which in reality may have their origin in a habitually depressed, anxious, or serious state of mind, and can be cured only by its removal. In this country especially, where such states of mind are so frequent, where emulation, over-work, serious views of this world and the next, so frequently cause a chronic state of mental anxiety and despondency, indigestion has, among the richer classes, much more frequently a mental than a bodily origin. The physician who does not recognise and pay equal attention to the mental diseases, with all their distinct natures and causes, is as incapable of treating a human being, as the moralist who neglects the physical. The treatment of mental is as infinitely difficult as that of bodily disease, and cannot be attained, but by the profoundest study of all the various causes of sorrow, and all the other imperfect and diseased mental states. Sorrow is not to be regarded any more than physical disease, as arising of itself, or sent to us by providence; that most unhappy error, which still blinds so many of us to its true nature, serving as a cover for our errors, and excuse for our supineness in not removing them. It invariably depends on some fault in us, or others, and on us it is incumbent to bear the blame, and to endeavour to remove the cause.