It always seems to be raining harder than it really is when you look at the weather through the window. Even in winter, though the landscape often seems cheerless and bare enough when you look at it from the fireside, still it is far better to go out, even if you have to brave the storm: when you are once out of doors the touch of earth and the breath of the fresh air gives you fresh life and energy. Men, like trees, live in great part on air. After a gallop over the downs, a row on the river, a sea voyage, a walk by the seashore or in the woods "The blue above, the music in the air, The flowers upon the ground," [6] one feels as if one could say with Henry IV., "Je me porte comme le Ponte Neuf." The Roman proverb that a child should be taught nothing which he cannot learn standing up, went no doubt into an extreme, but surely we fall into another when we act as if games were the only thing which boys could learn upon their feet. The love of games among boys is certainly a healthy instinct, and though carried too far in some of our great schools, there can be no question that cricket and football, boating and hockey, bathing and birdnesting, are not only the greatest pleasures, but the best medicines for boys. We cannot always secure sleep. When important decisions have to be taken, the natural anxiety to come to a right decision will often keep us awake. Nothing, however, is more conducive to healthy sleep than plenty of open air. Then indeed we can enjoy the fresh life of the early morning: "the breezy call of incense-bearing morn." [7] "At morn the Blackcock trims his jetty wing, 'Tis morning tempts the linnet's blithest lay, All nature's children feel the matin spring Of life reviving with reviving day." Epictetus described himself as "a spirit bearing about a corpse." That seems to me an ungrateful description. Surely we ought to cherish the body, even if it be but a frail and humble companion. Do we not own to the eye our enjoyment of the beauties of this world and the glories of the Heavens; to the ear the voices of friends and all the delights of music; are not the hands most faithful and invaluable instruments, ever ready in case of need, ever willing to do our bidding; and even the feet bear us without a murmur along the roughest and stoniest paths of life. With reasonable care, then, most of us may hope to enjoy good health. And yet what a marvellous and complex organization we have! We are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made. It is "Strange that a harp of a thousand strings, Should keep in tune so long." When we consider the marvellous complexity of our bodily organization, it seems a miracle that we should live at all; much more that the innumerable organs and processes should continue day after day and year after year with so much regularity and so little friction that we are sometimes scarcely conscious of having a body at all.