When I was some years younger than I am at present, I used to employ myself in a more laborious diversion, which I learned from a Latin treatise of exercises that is written with great erudition. It is there called the [Greek: skiomachia], or the fighting with a man's own shadow, and (25) consists in the brandishing of two short sticks grasped in each hand, and loaden with plugs of lead at either end. This opens the chest, exercises the limbs, and gives a man all the pleasure of boxing, without the blows. I could wish that several learned men would lay out that time which they employ in controversies and disputes about nothing, in this method of fighting with their own shadows. It might conduce very much to evaporate the spleen, which makes them uneasy[79] to the public as well as to (121: 5) themselves. [79] Disagreeable. To conclude, as I am a compound of soul and body, I consider myself as obliged to a double scheme of duties, and think I have not fulfilled the business of the day when I do not thus employ the one in labour and exercise, (10) as well as the other in study and contemplation. L. XV. SIR ROGER GOES A-HUNTING [No. 116. Friday, July 13, 1711. BUDGELL.] ----Vocat ingenti clamore Cithaeron, Taygetique canes. VIRG. Those who have searched into human nature observe that nothing so much shows the nobleness of the soul as that its felicity consists in action. Every man has such an active principle in him that he will find out something (15) to employ himself upon, in whatever place or state of life he is posted. I have heard of a gentleman who was under close confinement in the Bastile seven years; during which time he amused himself in scattering a few small pins about his chamber, gathering them up again, and placing them in different figures on the arm of a great chair. He often told his friends afterwards, that unless he had found out this piece of exercise, he verily believed (122: 5) he should have lost his senses.