So the Sibyl was noted by Heraclitus as [Greek: mainomén_o stómati gelastà kaì akall_ópista phtheggoménae] 'as one speaking ridiculous and unseemly speeches with her furious mouth.' This fragment is misquoted and misunderstood: for--[Greek: gelastà] it should be [Greek: amuristà]. unperfumed, inornate lays, not redolent of art.--Render it thus: ... Not her's To win the sense by words of rhetoric, Lip-blossoms breathing perishable sweets; But by the power of the informing Word Roll sounding onward through a thousand years Her deep prophetic bodements. [Greek: Stómati mainomén_o] is with ecstatic mouth. ... If the ascetic virtues, or disciplinary exercises, derived from the schools of philosophy (Pythagorean, Platonic and Stoic) were carried to an extreme in the middle ages, it is most certain that they are at present in a far more grievous disproportion underrated and neglected. The 'regula maxima' of the ancient [Greek: askaesis] was to conquer the body by abstracting the attention from it. Our maxim is to conciliate the body by attending to it, and counteracting or precluding one set of sensations by another, the servile dependence of the mind on the body remaining the same. Instead of the due subservience of the body to the mind (the favorite language of our Sidneys and Miltons) we hear nothing at present but of health, good digestion, pleasurable state of general feeling, and the like. [Footnote 1: Of Queen's College, Cambridge, 1660.] TO ADAM STEINMETZ K------. [1] MY DEAR GODCHILD, I offer up the same fervent prayer for you now, as I did kneeling before the altar, when you were baptized into Christ, and solemnly received as a living member of His spiritual body, the Church. Years must pass before you will be able to read with an understanding heart what I now write; but I trust that the all-gracious God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, who, by his only begotten Son, (all mercies in one sovereign mercy!) has redeemed you from the evil ground, and willed you to be born out of darkness, but into light--out of death, but into life--out of sin, but into righteousness, even into the 'Lord our Righteousness'; I trust that He will graciously hear the prayers of your dear parents, and be with you as the spirit of health and growth in body and mind. My dear Godchild!--You received from Christ's minister at the baptismal font, as your Christian name, the name of a most dear friend of your father's, and who was to me even as a son, the late Adam Steinmetz, whose fervent aspiration and ever-paramount aim, even from early youth, was to be a Christian in thought, word, and deed--in will, mind, and affections.