Do not be concerned, my worthy auditors; the time which you devote to recreation is not lost to learning; you will presently apply to your studies with renewed alacrity, and, whilst your strength and health are preserved, a long life will abundantly recompense the hours dedicated to the care of the body. In leisure likewise those sublime ideas may rise, which the obscurity of your musæum would for ever have suppressed, _for lively and vigorous geniuses make the more noble efforts, the more intervals of leisure they allow themselves_[38]. I have a particular friend, who, in his walks in the country, has composed books that will immortalize his name; _for the souls of those who walk under the canopy of heaven are exalted_: and PLINY the younger observes, _that it is surprizing to what a degree the soul is rous’d by the agitation and motion of the body_: close confinement contracts the body, the oil of the lamp, as it were, infects the thoughts by its smell, and by too intense study we become incapable of application. PLUTARCH has an ingenious observation, that as plants are nourished by moderate watering, but overwhelmed by too much, so the soul is improved by moderate studies, but overpowered by excessive studies[39]. Take my advice therefore, you men of learning; you will one day repent your austere retirement; but it will be too late to look for a remedy when the danger is at hand; and foresight becomes the wise man: don’t think to excuse your dangerous errors; the experiment is not made upon a vulgar soul, the life of a man of learning is at stake; neither alledge, in excuse for yourselves, the examples of others; nor your own strength, which you break every day; nor vain custom, for we can never use ourselves to a disease; nor the impunity of your early years, for reiterated strokes will break what one alone could not. Lay aside, therefore, the agitations of your minds, and exercise your bodies; for exercise is of so much service to the mind, that HOFFMAN[40] has by its means made stupid men attain to a degree of understanding; and do not despise the health of the body, with the assistance of which the labour of the mind will become more supportable; for the powers of the mind grow dull, if the strength of the body is in a wavering unsettled state. Physicians have power over souls; and DESCARTES has justly observed, “Animum adeo a temperamento & organorum corporis dispositione pendere, ut si ratio aliqua possit inveniri, quæ homines sapientiores & ingeniosiores reddat quam hactenus fuerit, credendum sit illam in medicina quæri debere.” “That the soul depends so much upon the constitution and disposition of the corporeal organs, that, if there could be a method found to render men wise and ingenious, it seems probable that it should be sought in physick[41].” There is a regimen calculated for the studious, of which I shall now give a succinct account[42].