[10] There is a morbid state of excitability in the body during the convalescence from fever, which is intimately connected with an undue propensity to venereal pleasures. I have met with several instances of it. The marriage of the celebrated Mr. Howard to a woman who was twice as old as himself, and very sickly, has been ascribed, by his biographer, Dr. Aiken, to _gratitude_ for her great attention to him in a fit of sickness. I am disposed to ascribe it to a sudden paroxysm of another passion, which, as a religious man, he could not gratify in any other, than in a lawful way. I have heard of two young clergymen who married the women who had nursed them in fits of sickness. In both cases there was great inequality in their years, and condition in life. Their motive was, probably, the same as that which I have attributed to Mr. Howard. Dr. Patrick Russel takes notice of an uncommon degree of venereal excitability which followed attacks of the plague at Messina, in 1743, in all ranks of people. Marriages, he says, were more frequent after it than usual, and virgins were, in some instances, violated, who died of that disease, by persons who had just recovered from it. 6. IDLENESS is the parent of every vice. It is mentioned in the Old Testament as another of the predisposing causes of the vices of the cities of the plain. LABOUR, of all kinds, favours and facilitates the practice of virtue. The country life is happy, chiefly because its laborious employments are favourable to virtue, and unfriendly to vice. It is a common practice, I have been told, for the planters, in the southern states, to consign a house slave, who has become vicious from idleness, to the drudgery of the field, in order to reform him. The bridewells and workhouses of all civilized countries prove, that labour is not only a very severe, but the most benevolent of all punishments, inasmuch as it is one of the most suitable means of reformation. Mr. Howard tells us, in his History of Prisons, that in Holland it is a common saying, "Make men work, and you will make them honest." And over the rasp and spinhouse at Gr[oe]ningen, this sentiment is expressed (he tells us) by a happy motto: "Vitiorum semina--otium--labore exhauriendum."