There is not the smallest danger in these days that any inquirer, however careless, should overlook the vast importance of physical soundness to every desirable mental result. Indeed, on the contrary, we may rather expect shortly to find our teachers treating Disease as the only real delinquency in the world, and all crimes and vices as mere symptoms of disordered nerves or overloaded stomach,—kleptomania, dipsomania, homicidal mania, or something equally pardonable on the part of automata like ourselves. Seriously speaking, a high state of health, such as the “Original” described himself as having attained, or even something a few degrees less perfect, is, undoubtedly, a potent factor in the sum of happiness, causing every separate sensation—sleeping, waking, eating, drinking, exercise, and rest—to be delightful; and the folly of people who seek for Happiness, and yet barter away Health for Wealth or Fame, or any other element thereof, is like that of a man who should sell gold for dross. Admitting this, it would seem to follow that Life in the Country, generally understood to be the most wholesome, must be the most conducive to the state of enjoyment. But there are two points not quite cleared up on the way to this conclusion. First, bodily health seems to be, to some people, anything but the blessing it ought to be, rendering them merely coarse and callous, untouched by those finer impulses and sentiments which pain has taught their feebler companions, and so shutting them out from many of the purest and most spiritual joys of humanity. Paley questioned whether the sum of happiness would not be increased to most of us by one hour of moderate pain in every twenty-four; and, though few would directly ask for the increment of enjoyment so attained, there are perhaps still fewer who would desire to unlearn all the lessons taught in the school of suffering, or find themselves with the gross, oxlike nature of many a farmer or publican, whose rubicund visage bears testimony to his vigorous appetite and to the small amount of pain, sorrow, or anxiety which his own or anybody else’s troubles have ever caused him. Taking it all in all, it seems doubtful, then, whether the most invariably robust people are really much higher than those with more fluctuating health who have taken from the bitter cup the sweet drop which is always to be found at the bottom by those who seek it. For those, unhappiest of all, whom disease has only rendered more selfish and self-centred and rebellious, there is, of course, no comparison possible.