Difficult as it may be in some instances to ascertain quite accurately whether an overworked man had perfectly sound bodily health to begin with, obvious as it may be that in many breakdowns the final failure has been accelerated by diseases independent of mental work, the facts remain, that the excessive exercise of the mental powers is injurious to bodily health and that all intellectual labor proceeds upon a physical basis. No man can safely forget this, and act as if he were a pure spirit, superior to physical considerations. Let me then, in other letters on this subject, direct your attention to the close connection which exists between intellectual production and the state of the body and the brain; not with the authority of a physician, but with the sympathy of a fellow-laborer, who has learned something from his own experience, and still more from the more varied experience of his friends. LETTER II. TO A YOUNG MAN OF LETTERS WHO WORKED EXCESSIVELY. Mental labor rarely compatible with the best physical conditions--Wordsworth's manner of composition--Mr. W. F. A. Delane--George Sand working under pressure--Sir Walter Scott's field-sports--Physical exercise the best tranquillizer of the nervous system--Eugène Sue--Shelley's love of boating--Nervousness the affliction of brain-workers--Nature's kindly warning--Working by spurts--Beckford--Byron--Indolence of men of genius fortunate--Distressing nature of cerebral fatigue. It is possible that many of the worst results of intellectual labor may be nothing more than indirect results. We may suffer, not from the work itself, but from sedentary confinement, from want of exercise, from insufficient variety and amusement. Mental labor is seldom compatible with the best physical conditions; it is so sometimes, however, or may be made so by an effort of will and resolution. Wordsworth composed his poetry in the open air, as he walked, and so preserved himself from the evil of close confinement to the desk. Mr. W. F. A. Delane, who did so much for the organization of the _Times_ newspaper when it was under his management, began by doing law reports for that paper, in London and on circuit. His appearance of rude health surprised other members of his profession, but he accounted for it by the care he took to compensate for the bad air and sedentary labor in the courts of law by travelling between the assize towns on horseback, and also by a more than commonly temperate way of life, since he carefully avoided the bar dinners, eating and drinking for health alone. It is possible to endure the most unhealthy labor when there are frequent intervals of invigorating exercise, accompanied by habits of strict sobriety. The plan, so commonly resorted to, of trying to get health in stock for the rest of the year by a fortnight's hurried travelling in the autumn, is not so good as Mr. Delane's way of getting the week's supply of health during the course of the week itself.