CHANGE OF AIR, OR THE PHILOSOPHY OF TRAVELLING. RETROSPECTION. As the carriage moved slowly up Shooter's Hill, one fine autumnal morning, I turned round to take a parting look at MODERN BABYLON. My eye ranged along the interminable grove of masts that shewed her boundless commerce-the hundred spires that proclaimed her ardent piety-the dense canopy of smoke that spread itself over her countless streets and squares, enveloping a million and a half of human beings in murky vapour. Imagination is always active, and memory is her prompter. Thirty years had rolled away since the same metropolis first burst on my view, in an opposite direction. Alas, how changed were my feelings, as well as my features, by that lapse of time! I can still distinctly remember the sensations that thrilled through my breast when London first expanded itself before me. Fortune, fame, pleasure, were prominent features in the mental perspective, and sanguine HOPE repelled every doubt of success! for life itself was new, And the heart promised what the fancy drew. But when I mingled with the chafing " tide of human existence" at Charing Cross, my heart sunk within me-I felt, as it B were, annihilated-lost, like a drop of water in the ocean-suddenly hurled from the giddy heights of imagination, and overwhelmed in the tumultuous stream of living beings that flowed in all directions around me. I believe there are very few who do not experience this feeling of abasement on first mixing with the crowd in the streets of London. Such, at least, was the depressive effect on myself, that all my fond dreams of ambition fled-my moral courage failed-and I abandoned that metropolis which a youthful imagination had pictured as the scene of aggrandizement and happiness, to wander for twenty years, by sea and land, over the surface of this globe Where Polar skies congeal th' eternal snow, To those who have approached the MIGHTY CITY, with more chastened hopes, but more matured judgment—with less sanguine expectations, but with more steady courage-better qualified to plunge into the vortex of competition, by inflexible resolution to "conquer difficulties by daring to oppose them," the following observations, from one who has experienced the influence of baleful as well as beneficial skies-of civic as well as erratic life, may not be without some interest. WEAR AND TEAR. There is a condition or state of body and mind, intermediate` between that of sickness and health, but much nearer the former than the latter, to which I am unable to give a satisfactory name. It is daily and hourly felt by tens of thousands in this metropolis, and throughout the empire; but I do not know that it has ever been described. It is not curable by physic, though I apprehend that it makes much work for the doctors ultimately, if not for the undertakers. It is that WEAR AND TEAR of the living machine, mental and corporeal, which results from over-strenu WEAR AND TEAR. 3 ous labour or exertion of the intellectual faculties, rather than of the corporeal powers, conducted in anxiety of mind and in bad air. It bears some analogy to the state of a ship, which, though still sea-worthy, exhibits the effects of a tempestuous voyage, and indicates the propriety of re-caulking the seams and overhauling the rigging. It might be compared to the condition of the wheels of a carriage, when the tyres begin to moderate their close embrace of the wood-work and require turning. Lastly, it bears no very remote similitude to the strings of a harp, when they get relaxed by a long series of vibrations, and demand bracing up. This WEAR-AND-TEAR COMPLAINT (if the designation be allowed) is almost peculiar to England, and is probably a descendant of the old "ENGLISH MALADY," about which so much was written a century ago. And why should it predominate in London so much more than in Paris? The reason is obvious: -In London, business is almost the only pleasure-in Paris, pleasure is almost the only business. In fact, the same cause which produces the WEAR-AND-TEAR malady, namely, hard work, or rather over-exertion, is that which makes our fields better cultivated, our houses better furnished, our villas more numerous, our cottons and our cutlery better manufactured, our machinery more effective, our merchants more rich, and our taxes more heavy than in France or Italy. If we compare the Boulevards, the cafés, the jardins, the promenades of Paris, with corresponding situations in and around the British Metropolis, we shall be forced to acknowledge that it is nearly “all work and no play" with JOHN BULL during six days of the week, and vice versâ with his Gallic neighbours. Does this "wear and tear" tell at last upon John's constitution, intellectual and corporeal? I do not speak of the mere labour of the body. The fatigue induced by the hardest day's toil may be dissipated by "tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep ;' but not so the fatigue of the mind! Thought and care cannot be discontinued or cast off when we please, like exercise. The head may be laid on the pillow, but a chaos of ideas will infest the over-worked brain, and either prevent our slumbers, or render them a series of feverish, tumultuous, or distressing dreams, from which we rise more languid than when we lie down! But it will be asked-can this apply to the immense mass of seasoners or sojourners in Babylon, who have nothing to think of but pleasure or dissipation-those “nati consumere fruges,” who remain as torpid as the owl while the light of Heaven is on the earth, and flutter in foul air while all other created beings are asleep? Yes. They, too, experience the "WEAR AND TEAR" of high civilization, fully as much as those whose intellectual and corporeal powers are worn down and expended in the most useful as well as the most honourable avocations.. It would be a very unequal distribution of justice were it otherwise! PREMATURE OLD AGE. It cannot be necessary to minutely describe that wEAR AND TEAR of the morale and the physique, which is too widely felt not to be readily recognized. The experienced eye detects it at a single glance in every street, in almost every habitationin the senate and in the theatre-at the bar and at the altar—in the cabinet, the court in short, in every spot where art, science, literature, or civilization can be found. One of the most striking features of this state is that which indeed would be, à priori, expected-PREMATURE AGE. Every one knows that a precocious development of the intellectual faculties, generally winds up, in the end, with an early failure of the mental powers. Now modern education, male and female, has a constant tendency to do that artificially, which Nature, in a capricious mood, sometimes does voluntarily ;-namely, to give birth to precocity of intelligence—with this difference, that the artificial precocity stamps its baneful mark on the physical organization as well as on the intellectual capacities of the individual, thus urged forward too quickly along the path of existence. The "march of intellect," then, is a forced march-and military men well know that forced marches will wear out the best troops that ever trode the field. The terrible competition and struggle for pre-eminence, introduced into all systems of male and female education, are not relaxed when scholastic discipline is at an end. Alas, no! A new and destructive element is then added-CARE! The studies of youth are untinctured by anxiety, except that of emulation; and they are sustained by that almost inexhaustible elasticity of mind which is inherent in the juvenile constitution. But when the next act of the drama comes to be performedwhen the curtain is drawn up, and we step forward on the stage of life, the competition is not merely for honorary rewards, but, among a large majority of society, for actual subsistence! This struggle, inductive of premature old age, is, of course, increased and rendered more baleful by the crowded state of all the learned professions-which redundancy of hands, or rather of heads, is itself produced, in a great degree, by the taste or mania for excessive education. Man naturally, and almost universally, aims at bettering his condition—that is, at rising a step above his present station. This impulse is, if possible, still more active with respect to his offspring. The consequence is a general and unquenchable thirst for knowledge and intellectual acquirements of all kinds, as the means of accomplishing the great object in view. This, in fact, is the MARCH, or rather the RACE of INTELLECT, in which the progression is with the head instead of the feet. And it is not in the higher pursuits of literature and science of divinity, law, medicine, and politics only that this system obtains; in every art, from the most refined to the most mechanical, one leading feature, one pervading object, is to work the brain in preference to the hand. That man was designed by his Creator to exercise both his intellectual and muscular powers, is as clear, from the organization of his body, as it is evident, from the structure of his teeth, that he was destined to live on animal and vegetable food. Nor does it appear that Nature is very squeamish about the relative proportions of intellectual and corporeal labour. We see people—almost whole nations, enjoy health and comparative happiness with scarcely any exercise of the thinking faculties-and we observe whole |