Here I cannot refrain from earnestly soliciting the attention of the reader to the injury inflicted on the young by the irrational mode of life and education to which they are now subjected. As growth and nutrition are in them in their highest activity, it follows that at no period of life is strict adherence to the laws of the animal economy of so much moment, because if the youthful system does not receive at the proper intervals the supplies of food of which it stands urgently in need, it must necessarily be impaired in tone, and become more liable to the inroads of disease. The completed and compact frame of an adult may resist for a time irregularity in its supplies; but the undeveloped and susceptible organization of the young, suffers from the very first, and the evil increases in proportion as the aberration from the order of Nature is repeated. Hence reason, affection, and enlightened benevolence, all concur in enforcing a strict adherence to an early dinner hour for the young. And yet, if we examine the customs of society, especially in the middle and higher ranks resident in towns, we find the school occupations so irrationally arranged, that while the children are obliged to breakfast early, even in winter, to reach them in time, most of them find it impossible to dine till five or six o’clock--_eight_ or _nine_ hours after their first meal, instead of _four_ or _five_. And when feeble digestion, delicacy, or bad health result as the natural consequence of our insane proceedings, instead of blaming our own folly and amending our conduct, we sit down complacently to lament the degeneracy of the age, and boast of the marvellous constitutions and hardihood of the children of _our_ day, whom neither wind nor weather could hurt. If it were a favourite colt or dog whose training we were superintending, the folly of shutting it up all day in a confined atmosphere and denying it food at proper intervals, would stare us in the face. But in our vain conceit, we cannot bring ourselves to admit that our bodies grow and thrive under the influence of the same general laws by which those of animals are regulated; and are better pleased to receive the chastisement due to our ignorance and pride in the shape of disease and death, than to inquire into the will of God towards us, and bow to it in submissive meekness, and well-founded hope.