persons should rarely eat solids after three o’clock in the day, as fever is generally the consequence; and thus, almost every complaint that distresses and destroys the human frame, may be engendered. “When hunger calls, obey; nor often wait Till hunger sharpen to corrosive pain; For the keen appetite will feast beyond What nature well can bear; and one extreme Ne’er without danger meets its own reverse.” Besides, when we add to this evil the present mode of bracing the digestive part of the body, in what is called _long stays_, to what an extent must reach the baneful effects of a protracted and abundant repast? Indeed, I am fully persuaded that long fasting, late dining, and the excessive repletion then taken into the exhausted stomach, with the tight pressure of steel and whalebone on the most susceptible parts of the frame then called into action, and the midnight, nay, morning hours, of lingering pleasure, are the positive causes of colds taken, bilious fevers, consumptions, and atrophies. By the means enumerated, the firm texture of the constitution is broken, and the principles of health being in a manner decomposed, the finest parts fly off, and the dregs maintain the poor survivor of herself, in a sad kind of artificial existence. Delicate proportion gives place either to miserable leanness or shapeless fat. The once fair skin assumes a pallid rigidity, or a bloated redness, which the vain possessor would still regard as the roses of health and beauty. To repair these ravages, comes the aid of padding, to give shape where there is none; long stays, to compress into form the chaos of flesh; and paints of all hues, to rectify the disorder of the complexion. But useless are these attempts. If dissipation, disease, and immoderation, have wrecked the fair vessel of female charms, it is not in the power of Esculapius himself to refit the shattered bark; or of the Syrens, with all their songs and wiles, to conjure its battered sides from the rocks, and make it ride the seas in gallant trim again. It is with pleasure that I turn from this ruin of all that is beauteous and lovely, to the cheering hope of preserving every charm unimpaired; and by means which the most ingenuous mind need not blush to acknowledge. The rules, I repeat, are few. First, _Temperance_: a well-timed use of the table, and so moderate a pursuit of pleasure, that the midnight ball, assembly, and theatre, shall not too frequently recur. My next specific is that of gentle and daily _Exercise_ in the open air. Nature teaches us, in the gambols and sportiveness of the young of the lower animals, that bodily exertion is necessary for the growth, vigor, and symmetry of the animal frame; while the too studious scholar, and the indolent man of luxury, exhibit in themselves the pernicious consequences of the want of exercise.