are away down the manger. Here the sheepwalks mislead many, and, amongst the rest, the fleetest of the gipsies, who makes off at full speed along one of them. Two or three men still go boldly down the steep descent, falling and picking themselves up again; and Jonathan Legg, of Childrey, is the first of these... He has now gained the flat ground at the bottom, where, after a short stagger, he brings himself up and makes straight for the umpires and the wheel... The gipsy now sees his error; and turning short down the hill, comes into the flat, running some twenty yards behind Jonathan. In another hundred yards he would pass him, for he gains at every stride, but it is too late; and we at the top of the hill cheer loudly when we see Jonathan, the man who had gone straight all the way, touch the wheel a clear ten yards before his more active rival. Scouring of the White Horse.

THE ART OF ENJOYING LIFE.

IF you would enjoy life, it is necessary to be careful in preserving health, by due exercise and great temperance; for in sickness the imagination is disturbed; and disagreeable, sometimes terrible, ideas are apt to present themselves... Exercise should precede meals, not immediately follow them: the first promotes; the latter, unless moderate, obstructs, digestion. If after exercise, we feed sparingly, the digestion will be easy and good, the body lightsome, the temper cheerful, and all the animal functions performed agreeably... Sleep, when it follows, will be natural and undisturbed; while indolence, with satiety, occasions night-mares and horrors inexpressible: we fall from precipices, are assaulted by wild beasts, murderers, and demons, and experience every variety of distress.

Observe, however, that the quantities of food and exercise, are relative things: those who move much may, and indeed ought, to eat more those who use little exercise, should eat little. In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eat about twice as much as nature requires. As there is a difference in constitutions, some rest well after gluttonous meals; it costs them only a frightful dream and an apoplexy, after which they sleep till doomsday. Nothing is more common in the newspapers, than instances of people, who, after eating a hearty supper, are found dead in the morning.

Another means of preserving health, to be attended to, is the having a constant supply of fresh air in your bed-chamber. It

has been a great mistake, the sleeping in rooms exactly closed, and in beds surrounded by curtains... No outward air, that may come into you, is so unwholesome as the unchanged air, often breathed, of a close chamber. As boiling water does not grow hotter by longer boiling, if the particles that receive greater heat can escape; so living bodies do not putrefy, if the particles, as fast as they become putrid, can be thrown off... Nature expels them by the pores of the skin and lungs, and in a free open air they are carried off; but, in a close room, we receive them again and again, though they become more and more corrupt. A number of persons crowded into a small room, thus spoil the air in a few minutes, and even render it mortal, as in the Black Hole at Calcutta. A single person is said to spoil a gallon of air per minute, and therefore requires a longer time to spoil a chamberful; but it is done, however, in proportion, and many putrid disorders have hence their origin... It is recorded of Methusalem, who, having been the longest liver, may be supposed to have best preserved his health, that he slept always in the open air; for when he had lived five hundred years, an angel said to him, "Arise, Methusalem, and build thee an house, for thou shalt live yet five hundred years longer." But Methusalem answered and said, “If I am to live but five hundred years longer, it is not worth while to build me an house: I will sleep in the open air as I have been used to do "... Physicians, after having for ages contended that the sick should not be indulged with fresh air, have at length discovered that it may do them good. It is therefore to be hoped that they may in time discover likewise, that it is not hurtful to those who are in health; and that we may then be cured of the aërophobia that at present distresses weak minds, and makes them choose to be stiffed and poisoned, rather than leave open the window of a bed-chamber, or put down the glass of a carriage.

Confined air, when saturated with perspirable matter, will not receive more; and that matter must remain in our bodies, and occasion diseases: but it gives some previous notice of its being about to be hurtful, by producing a certain uneasiness, slight indeed at first, such as with regard to the lungs is a stifling sensation, and to the pores of the skin a kind of restlessness which it is difficult to describe, and of which few that feel it know the cause.... But we may recollect, that sometimes, on waking in the night, we have, if warmly covered, found it difficult to get to sleep again. We turn often, without finding repose in any position. This fidgetiness is occasioned by an uneasiness in the skin, owing to the retension of the perspirable

matter; the bed-clothes having received their quantity, and, being saturated, refusing to take any more.

Franklin.

LIBERTY.

"BESHREW the sombre pencil," said I, vauntingly, "for I envy not its powers, which paints the evils of life with so hard and deadly a coloring. The mind sits terrified at the objects she has herself magnified, and blackened; reduce them to their proper size and hue, she overlooks them. 'Tis true," said I, "the jail is not an evil to be despised; but strip it of its towers, fill up the moat, unbarricade the doors; call it simply a confinement, and suppose it is some tyrant of a distemper, and not of a man who holds you in it, the evil vanishes, and you bear the other half without complaint."

I was interrupted in the heyday of this soliloquy with a voice, which I took to be that of a child, which complained, "It could not get out." I looked up and down the passage, and seeing neither man, woman, nor child, I went out without further attention. In my return back through the passage, I heard the same words repeated twice over; and looking up, I saw it was a starling, hung in a little cage. "I can't get out; I can't get out," said the starling.

I stood looking at the bird; and to every person who came through the passage it ran fluttering to the side towards which they approached it, with the same lamentation of its captivity. "I can't get out," said the starling. "God help thee," said I, "but I will let thee out, cost what it will;" so I turned about the cage to get to the door; it was twisted, and double twisted so fast with wire, there was no getting it open without pulling the cage to pieces. I took both hands to it.

The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance, and thrusting his head through the trellis, pressed his breast against it as if impatient. "I fear, poor creature," said I, "that I cannot set thee at liberty." "No," said the starling, "I can't get out; I can't get out," said the starling.

I vow I never had my affections more tenderly awakened; nor do I remember an incident in my life where the dissipated spirits, to which my reason had been a bubble, were so suddenly called home. Mechanical as the notes were, yet so true in tune to nature were they chanted, that in one moment they overthrew all my systematic reasoning upon the jail; and I heavily walked upstairs, unsaying every word I had said in going down them.

"Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, slavery," said I, "still thou art a bitter draught! and though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account.

""Tis thou, thrice sweet and gracious goddess," addressing myself to Liberty, "whom all in public or in private worship, whose taste is grateful and ever will be so, till Nature herself shall change; no tint of words can spot thy snowy mantle, or chymic power turn thy sceptre into iron. With thee to smile upon him, as he eats his crust, the swain is happier than his monarch, from whose court thou art exiled. Gracious heaven!" cried I, kneeling down upon the last step but one in my ascent, "grant me but health, thou great Bestower of it, and give me but this fair goddess as my companion, and shower down thy mitres, if it seems good unto Thy divine providence, upon those heads that are aching for them."

The image of the bird in his cage pursued me into my room; I sat down, close by my table, and leaning my head upon my hand, I began to figure to myself the miseries of confinement. I was in a right frame for it, so I gave full scope to my imagination.

I was going to begin with the millions of my fellow-creatures born to no inheritance but slavery; but finding, however affecting the picture was, that I could not bring it near me, and that the multitude of sad groups in it did but distract me, I took a single captive, and having first shut him up in his dungeon, I then looked through the twilight of his grated door to take his picture.

I beheld his body, half wasted away with long expectation and confinement, and felt what kind of sickness of the heart it was which arises from hope deferred. Upon looking nearer, I saw him pale and feverish; in thirty years, the western breeze had not once fanned his blood; he had seen no sun, no moon, in all that time; nor had the voice of friend or kinsman breathed through his lattice. His children but here my heart began to bleed, and I was forced to go on with another part of the portrait.

He was sitting upon the ground, upon a little straw, in the farthest corner of his dungeon, which was alternately his chair and bed; a little calendar of small sticks was laid at the head, notched all over with the dismal days and nights he had passed there. He had one of these little sticks in his hand, and, with a rusty nail, he was etching another day of misery to add to the heap. As I darkened the little light he had, he lifted up a hopeless eye towards the door, then cast it down, shook his head, and went on with his work of affliction. Í

heard the chains upon his legs, as he turned his body to lay his little stick upon the bundle. He gave a deep sigh. I saw the iron enter into his soul; I burst into tears; I could not sustain the picture of confinement which my fancy had drawn. Sterne.

FLOWERS.

WHY does not every one have a geranium in his window, or some other flower? It is very cheap; its cheapness is next to nothing, if you raise it from seed or from a slip; and it is a beauty and a companion. It sweetens the air, rejoices the eye, links you with nature and innocence, and is something to love. And if it cannot love you in return, it cannot hate you; it cannot utter a hateful thing even for your neglecting it; for, though it is all beauty, it has no vanity.

But, pray, if you choose a geranium, or possess but a few of them, let us persuade you to choose the scarlet kind, the “old original" geranium, and not a variety of it, not one of the numerous diversities of red and white, blue and white, ivyleaved, &c. Those are all beautiful, and very fit to vary a large collection; but to prefer them to the originals of the race, is to run the hazard of preferring the curious to the beautiful, and costliness to sound taste.

It may be taken as a good general rule, that the most popular plants are the best; for otherwise they would not have become such. And what the painters call " pure colors," are preferable to mixed ones, for reasons which Nature herself has given when she painted the sky of one color, and the fields of another, and divided the rainbow itself into a few distinct colors, and made the red rose the queen of flowers.

Variations in flowers are like variations in music, often beautiful as such, but almost always inferior to the theme on which they are founded, the original air. And the rule holds good in beds of flowers, if they be not very large, or in any other small assemblage of them. Nay, the largest bed will look well, if of one beautiful color, while the most beautiful varieties may be inharmoniously mixed up... We do not, in general, love and honor any one single color enough, and we are instinctively struck with a conviction to this effect, when we see it abundantly set forth. The other day we saw a little garden wall covered with nasturtiums, and felt how much more beautiful it was than if anything had been mixed with it; for the leaves and the light and shade offer variety enough. Em