Early training exercises great power over the stomach as well as over the mind. In savage life, where the supplies of food are precarious, a single meal may be copious enough to serve for two or three days together. The monks of La Trappe make it part of their religion to eat only once a-day, and nothing but vegetable food--unless when sick, in which case milk is allowed; but it is long before they become reconciled to the restriction. I once travelled for three days in a French diligence with one of the order, then on his way from Italy to the Monastery of La Trappe, near Nantes, and observed that he scrupulously adhered to his single meal. He had a dispensation, however, authorizing him to eat animal food and use wine during his journey; and I was surprised at the extent to which he availed himself of the permission, by devouring at one time a store sufficient to last for a week instead of a day. But, as in the case of the Boa constrictor in similar circumstances, a deep lethargy immediately succeeded, and it was not till four or five hours afterwards that his almost apoplectic features became again animated and expressive: long before next meal, however, his renewed appetite betrayed itself by expressive glances towards the comforts of the breakfast-table. Nature, then, _has fixed no particular hours for eating_, but has left us to adapt our regimen to our respective ages, constitutions, and modes of life. Where the mode of life is uniform, fixed hours may be adopted; where it is irregular, we ought to be guided by the real wants of the system as indicated by appetite. According to this principle, meals ought to be early or late in proportion to the habits of the individual. If, adhering to the order of Nature, we work by day and sleep by night, then early breakfast, early dinner, and an early evening meal, will undoubtedly be the most conducive to sound digestion and the enjoyment of health. But if, against the laws of Nature, we rise from bed late in the forenoon, reserve our activity till late in the afternoon, and do not go to sleep till two or three hours before day-break, then assuredly the late breakfasts and dinners of the fashionable society of the present day are the best for our comfort that can be devised; and the chief error lies in the practice of those who, while they in other respects live in conformity with nature, adopt the hours which are suitable for those only who turn night into day and day into night.