“They are generally temperate in their diet. They injure health, not by direct attacks, not by the introduction of injurious agents, but by withholding the pabulum of life--a due supply of that pure fluid, which nature designed as food for the constitution. Be it remembered that man subsists upon the air, more than upon his meat and drink. Numerous instances might be adduced of persons existing for months and years on a very scanty supply of aliment, but it is notorious that no one can exist for an hour without a copious supply of air. The atmosphere which shopkeepers breathe is contaminated and adulterated; air, with its vital principles so diminished, that it cannot fully decarbonize the blood, nor fully excite the nervous system. Hence shopkeepers are pale, dyspeptic, and subject to affections of the head. They often drag on a sickly existence, die before the proper end of human life, and leave a progeny like themselves.” The merchant and manufacturer is probably not more fortunate, though he may appear to have a greater command of worldly comforts:-- “Of the causes of disease, anxiety of mind is one of the most frequent and important. When we walk the streets of large commercial towns, we can scarcely fail to remark the hurried gait, and care-worn features of the well-dressed passengers. Some young men, indeed, we may see, with countenances possessing natural cheerfulness and colour; but these appearances rarely survive the age of manhood. Cuvier closes an eloquent description of animal existence and change, with the conclusion that ‘life is a state of force.’ What he would urge in a physical view, we may more strongly urge in a moral. Civilization has changed our character of mind as well as of body. We live in a state of unnatural excitement:--unnatural, because it is partial, irregular, and excessive. Our muscles waste for _want_ of action; our nervous system is worn out by _excess_ of action. Vital energy is drawn from the operations for which nature designed it, and devoted to operations which nature never contemplated. If we cannot adopt the doctrine of a foreign philosopher, ‘that a thinking man is a depraved animal,’ we may without hesitation affirm, ‘that inordinate application of mind, the cares, anxieties, and disappointments of commercial life, greatly impair the physical powers.’” Let us see if the _idle_ man of independent fortune is placed under more favourable circumstances for the enjoyment of existence:--