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perversities of her grown-up spoiled children, and provokes her resentment-which is terrible when once she begins to be angry with those with whom she was most affectionate, and to chastise those of whom she was most tender.

As was said before-our habits are hypochondria-breeding: we do not give Nature fair play, and then when anything goes wrong with us, we throw the whole blame on her, and make it out that we are ill-used. But this is a mean and shabby shuffling out of the responsibility, which lies with ourselves, and ourselves only. Nature is a plain-dealer with us; let us be honest with her—not accuse her of things of which she is innocent, nor attempt, by evasion and subornation of witnesses, to carry ourselves clean out of court.

We abuse our heads and stomachs: the one has too much to think about, and the other to digest. The stomach resents it, and the head goes wrong:-or the brain is oppressed with thought and care-with money-inventing and money-circumventing, and the stomach and its fellow-workers rebel. If a wheel of your watch is clogged and impeded, and performs its functions imperfectly, it avails little that the other wheels are clean and capable of their task; the impediment of one, in time, impedes the others, and the instrument is no longer accurate. The works which makes up that more wonderful piece of mechanism, Man, are as nicely adjusted, and depend as much as those of your watch upon the accuracy of movement of all the parts: every member must do its duty punctually, or the uniformity and oneness of operation ceases, and we may easily imagine what must follow.

Much eating and drinking, and no relaxation of the bow which will bear straining, but must not always be on the strain, are the exciting causes of our worst bodily and mental miseries. It is not too much to say, that nineteen-twentieths of the overcrowded population of this overgrown city are the authors of their own ailments; the twentieth content themselves with taking such as Nature sends them as their share of "the infirmities which flesh is heir to," and do not wilfully add to that which is already too much. The nineteenth seem to live in this large metropolis as if there was no way out of it. The few who have discovered that it has outlets, and bring back hourly news of the health-giving vicinities spreading round about it,-where the eye is daily freshened with an eververdant green-the lungs are purified with wholesome draughts of vital air unmixed with the filthy exhalations of a town-the overboiling blood is cooled down to temperate, and its flow regulated by exercise-the passions silenced by the silence of the placid fields sleeping in the sun;these spies into the Canaan of health are listened to with incredulous ears, and looked upon with unbelieving eyes. That they wear the red and white of health-eat with enjoyment, turn what they eat to nutriment-sleep well-are active in their daily business-have clear heads and wholesome thoughts, these sicklings cannot deny ;-it must be a difference of constitution which makes them what they are not their change of bad air for good-activity for sedentariness-circulation for stagnation of the vital flood-sinews strengthened by exertion for sinews relaxed by inertion-legs put to the use for which they were intended, instead of being cramped up under desks and dining-tables till they are too swollen for exercise, and too painful even for easy slippers. These healthy people are so by accident of constitution: they possess

an invaluable blessing, for which they should thank God and their prudent fathers and mothers; but as for us, we are doomed men— -born to bear the hardest and heaviest burdens of life, and not bear them well; we are incurable-advice, though given gratis, is thrown away upon us—our constitutions are not worth the price of a box of quack pills: let us go on, then, in our own old way—it is too late to take to a new one: leave us to our inactive livers and lungs which scarcely play— attempt not to awaken us from our lethargy: if you will but let us alone, we shall sleep quietly enough and want no waking. Let them alone, then, by all means:

"Leave them-leave them to repose."

But you who are impatient of these miseries, and would be whole again, know that they are not remediless-that the remedy is even in your own possession, and that you may be your own physician, though you will require some small assistance from your apothecary. If you have been too sedentary, either in your business, or in your relaxations from business, refrain for a time from the one, and let the other be of a more active nature. Going from your desk to the theatre will not alleviate these complaints-nor will passing from your house to that of a friend, and there sitting down to cards and chess;-these may amuse the mind, but they will not lighten, clear, clean, and renovate the body. A congestion of the vital parts of your frame is not to be removed by lolling in a lump on a chair, however much the hands may be employed, and the mind interested. You may 66 take a man," but you are all the while losing one you may get the " odd trick," and "count all the honours," but there is a gaunt fellow behind your chair, who is looking over your hand, and chuckling to think how completely you are playing into his hands, how soon his old trick can despoil you of your odd trick,—how easily he can turn your honours into posthumous ones. Leave, then, these sedentary occupations, and instead of counting cards count milestones: eight of these (taking which you will, those which range themselves in lines dating from "The Standard in Cornhill," or those which take their station at proper distances "From the Spot where Hicks's Hall formerly stood,")-will do you more vital good than all the honours which Hoyle ever wot of-than all the pawns which Philidor ever perplexed his ingenious brains about.

If you have "loved, not wisely, but too well," the pleasures of the table, love them less. Lower your diet-but not too low: a little coal properly thrown on a fire keeps it burning; a bushel puts it out: there is a medium measure between a handfull and a skuttlefull. Remember that it is the quantity, not the quality of food that makes it indigestible. A man with a pretty good stomach might partake moderately of marbles, and live; but if he swallowed bagsfull at a time, he might reasonably expect a fit of indigestion. Reynières, the witty author of the Almanach des Gourmands, has properly characterised a fit of indigestion as the " remorse of a guilty stomach." A man with a temperate appetite does not know that he has such a thing as a stomach, except when he receives a nudge from a neighbour's elbow in it; or, which is much more pleasant, when he complacently smooths down his waistcoat after a dinner which pleased him, and pats its pockets with a feeling of the grateful for a bellyfull. Eat little, then. You are not, like the boa con

strictor, obliged to bolt a buffalo at a meal, or go without a dinner at all for want of a pantry. A dog is wiser than that; and when he has had enough, will carefully bury the remainder of his joint for the next day. Is Towler to have better notions of the abstemious than Tomkins?

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If you have indulged in potations throttle deep," do not at once turn down your glass, but be resolute in having it but once where it was thrice filled. You will miss for a few days your darling stimulant; but your constitution, meanwhile, having lightened the hold, and the ballast having shifted, but not so as to put the vessel out of all trim, will then discover for herself where it is not crank, and will begin her own repairs ;-if there is a plank sprung, or a seam started, will secure the one, stop the other, and restore the vessel to sea-worthiness.

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Keep the mind cheerful, if you can, and employed, which you may. A vacant mind, like a bill in parliament, may be innocent enough in that state; but it depends upon the filling up ere "the third reading" as to what it will turn out. Do you love reading? Read works of humour in preference to those of seriousness; such as the novels of Fielding and Smollett, Scott, Edgeworth, Bulwer, and Galt. These writers will give you more cheerful views of life-the two first especially. If you have not looked into Fielding since you were a boy, (and where is the man who, as a boy, did not read Tom Jones?) there is something in mere association which will recall the feelings of that happiest period of life; and it is hard if there is not some passage of the past, which, only to remember, is like living youth over again. If you once begin to laugh, farewell, for that fit, to hypochondria. Avoid even a Parthian glance at past impressions of a painful nature. Do not dwell long on old grievances, even if they will start up again, and, like Richard's victims, repass in melancholy procession. Let them come like shadows-so depart :” our bodily eyes are given that we may look before us ;-hope, our mental eyesight, inclines us to look forward. There is no further use in being mindful of the past than as it makes us careful of the future. Avoid rumination leave " chewing the cud of sweet and bitter" to fourfooted creatures; they have nothing else to do, and can turn it to some account. Even in your progress to convalescence, some old monster, bred and born of the disease, will start up to frighten you back; but nothing will so effectually subdue it as this very simple exorcism :hail its rise with a hearty " pooh, pooh!" and a hundred to one but it turns tail. But, before all things, avoid fresh occasions for mental disquiet. Let the actions of the day be such as will bear review on the pillow at night. If you have done a wrong anywhere, either thoughtlessly or from passion, set it right—if possible :-if you cannot, at least atone for it by doing good in some other quarter. It is the impulse— the intention-not the mere value and amount of the good you may do, which is the thing: it is the thought that you are not so much engrossed by yourself and your own afflictions but that you can still sympathise with others, which shall make you rich indeed. Encourage charity in thought, word, and deed. If you can once forget yourself, and look abroad upon the world, not as a mere idle speculator upon the miseries of your fellow-men, but as a participator in them, you will soon forget your own cares and miseries in the cares and miseries of others. Leave all besides to heaven.

June.-VOL. XLI. NO. CLXII.

C. W.

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KING LEAR, AS SHAKSPEARE WROTE IT."

The language of this sublimest of tragedies, which, for a hundred and fifty years and upwards, has been impudently supplanted by the ignorant trash of Mr. Poet-Laureate Tate, was restored to the stage on the 23rd of May, by the most accomplished of our living actors. He has thus in some sort redeemed the disgraces of the players his predecessors-"these harlotry players," as Mrs. Quickly calls them-who had preferred a vulgar and impudent “huswife to that muse whose beauty and whose dowry is exhaustless, and who never fails to confer wealth, power, and understanding, in return for devotion paid her.

We must be very guarded, however, in the praise we bestow on Mr. Macready. He deserves much, but not all we could desire to have offered him. What he has restored is, indeed, the unalloyed language and severe passion of Shakspeare; but he has not restored all. He has done much; but he has left much undone. He has given us Lear in his grandest and most appalling aspect; but he has denied him to us in that which would have touched our hearts most nearly, and moved most sensibly our pity. Ah! Mr. Macready, why did you omit the Fool? We must remonstrate with you strongly on this point, as we will not be chary of our praise in others. The Fool is one of the most wonderful creations of the genius of Shakspeare. The picture of his quick and pregnant sarcasm, of his loving devotion, of his acute sensibility, of his despairing mirth, of his heartbroken silence-contrasted with the rigid sublimity of Lear's suffering, with the huge desolation of Lear's sorrow, with the vast and outspread image of Lear's madness-is the noblest thought that ever entered into the heart and mind of man. Nor is it a noble thought merely: it is for action-for representation: necessary to the audience as tears are to an overcharged heart-necessary to Lear himself as the recollection of his kingdom, or as the worn and faded garments of his power. We will take leave to say, that Shakspeare would as soon have consented to the banishment of Lear from the tragedy, as to the banishment of his Fool. We can fancy him, while planning the immortal work, feeling suddenly, with the instinct of his divine genius, that its gigantic sorrows could never be presented on the stage without a suffering too frightful, a sublimity too remote, a grandeur too terrible-unless relieved by quiet pathos, and in some way brought home to the apprehensions of the audience by homely and familiar illustration. At such a moment that Fool rose to his mind, and not till then could he have contemplated his marvellous work in the greatness and the beauty of its final completion. Complete without him the tragedy can never be. See how inextricably he is interwoven with Lear. What is it that immediately stirs the rage of the wolf Goneril? A report that her favourite gentleman had been struck by her father, "for chiding of his Fool"-for chiding the only being that seems truly dear and necessary to Lear's sight after the fatal division of his kingdom. Remember the questions, "Where's my knave-my fool? Go you and call my fool hither." "Where's my fool? ho! I think the world's asleep." "But where's my fool? I have not seen him these two days." And, oh! remember the reply that is given-read it, if you can, without tears: Since my young lady's going into France, Sir, the fool hath much pined away." "No more of that!" interrupts the impatient

king, with ill-repressed emotion, "I have noted it well.” Words cannot go beyond this; and it lets us into a secret corner of his heart, which were closed without it. We see him still clinging to the memory of her who was used to be his best object, the argument of his praise, balm of his age, "most best, most dearest." We see that his love for the Fool is associated with Cordelia, who was kind to the poor boy, and for the loss of whom he pines away. We are prepared for that most touching question when the Fool enters, flinging, in the hectic merriment of despair, his coxcomb at Kent, "How now, my pretty knave? How dost thou ?” And we are still better prepared for the sublime pathos of the close, when Lear, bending over the dead body of all he had left to love upon the earth, connects with her the memory of that other gentle, faithful, and loving being who had passed from his side-unites, in that moment of final agony, the two hearts which had been broken in his service—and exclaims, " And my poor fool is hanged!" These are beauties, it may be said, too subtle for the stage: we might admit this, were the character and introduction of the Fool dependent solely upon such as these. But it is evident that this is not so; that, on the contrary, the Fool is meant to play a material part before the audience-to point home to them the wandering sublimity of Lear-to relieve their aching hearts and "tightened breasts" from the over-intensity of his sorrows, while he brings withal yet more closely to their apprehensions (without danger to their own wits) his mighty sense of suffering, his sublimity of imagination. With this, too, he plays another part. Mark his intense efforts, while despair is struggling with his jests, to bring Lear back to reason. Every word he utters probes to the quick. "This is not altogether fool, my lord," says Kent. "You more knave than fool," says Goneril," follow your master! Mark how he turns upon that fiendish daughter with the courage of a fearless love,-follow him through the next scene with Lear, when they are alone, and the thought of Cordelia rises-"I did her wrong;" -see how his thrilling sarcasms turn the King at last towards the recovery of his kingdom-" to take it again perforce!" Mark throughout the whole of the scenes, up to the end of the second act, with what desperate efforts he pursues this purpose, reminding Lear, when he seeks Regan, that "winter's not gone yet," and threatening Kent (in a speech pregnant with humane wisdom and striking pathos) to set him to school to an ant, to teach him there's no labouring in the winter." Is this not an integral portion of the play?-can the play be really acted without this? Why, the Fool should be restored, if only to allow the actor of Lear to give due effect to those little words (so grand, so touching, so familiarly sublime) when, at the end of the second act, in the effort of bewildering passion with which he strives to burst through the phalanx of amazed horrors that have closed him round, he feels that he has shaken his mighty intellect, and suddenly exclaims, " O, Fool, I shall go mad!" We can take no rant of self-upbraiding to supply the place of this. Let us pursue the poor knave a few steps farther. One half of his work is done now. The worst is certain-he cannot recall it-he can only soothe it. Mark how he does this: Kent asks who is with Lear in the storm? He is answered

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"None but the Fool, who labours to outjest
His heart-struck injuries."

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