I will solemnly own, that I have cured more nervous disorders, (and learned men are generally troubled with such) by retrenching the quantity of liquor, forbidding all warm beverages, as well as wine, and recommending exercise, than by any other remedies. Nor should the danger of leaving off what people have been used to, be alledged: there is no such danger; or, if there be, it is easily avoided by a gradual disuse. But take notice, if sometimes the too great laxity of the stomach, the great weakness of the body, and the depression of the spirits, require a remedy to brace, to strengthen, to excite, to exhilarate; wine is the most proper. In vain would you seek a more expeditious and agreeable medicine than this through the three kingdoms of nature: but let it be generous and smooth, and such as may vie with Falernian wine: _Quod curas abigat, quod cum spe divite manet_ _In venas, animumque meum, quod verba ministret._ _My wines of generous and of smoother kind,_ _To drive away my cares, and to the soul,_ _Through the full veins, with golden hopes to roll._ _With flowing language to inspire my tongue,_ _And make the list’ning fair one think me young._ FRANCIS’S Hor. lib. 1. ep. 15. But avoid those small wines which have less of the nature of wine than vinegar, and rather irritate than strengthen. Remember that wine is an antidote against the miseries of life and the tediousness of idleness; cares are banished by wine, whilst the reason is intoxicated: but does such a drink become the learned? And this puts me in mind of another sort of intoxication, I mean that caused by smoking tobacco, which abounds with an acrimonious salt and sulphur, together with a narcotic oil. I have elsewhere enlarged upon the folly of smoking; here I shall add more concisely, that the narcotic principle hurts the stomach, causes a stuffing up of the head, head-achs, vertigos, anxiety, lethargy, apoplexy, and finally all the effects of opium, as the great Lord BACON has observed. _Tobacco_, says he, _the use of which herb has greatly prevailed in the present age, is a species of henbane; it is evident that it disturbs the head like opiates_. Therefore, young men, avoid a dirty pleasure, equally injurious both to your health and your studies, and which should be left to those who have recourse to it for the killing of time. The muses fly those studies that smell like a stable, and delight in a purer air; for one of the chief sources of health or sickness is the air which environs us, in which we live, and by which not only our bodies are affected, but whose power our very minds experience. Thus the air of Bœotia, or Thrace, rendered dull those whom that of Athens revived: _Bœotum in crasso jurares ære natum_[48]. _Take him to books and poetry, you’ll swear_ _This king was born in thick Bœotian air._ FRANCIS’S Hor. lib. 2. ep. 1.