without effort, and that his fruitful imagination traces at pleasure, the most elaborate and beautiful descriptions. The horizontal posture favours this, which may be explained chemically and mechanically.

We would respectfully submit to the attention of our monitors, the thrilling fact, that all the impressions received by the organs of sense, and by the sentient extremities of nerves, are transmitted to the brain. The brain is therefore the centre of animal life; all sensations are carried to it; it is the spring of all voluntary motion. This centre is to the functions of relation, as the heart is to the functions of nutrition. Man's life is like a book, of which the first and last pages are generally blank; but it is needless, and worse than needless, to blotch it unnecessarily. We do not want a huge hydrocephalus. One may say of the brain as of the heart,-Omnibus dat, et ab omnibus accipit. "It receives from all, and gives to all." We may conjecture with some probability, that each perception, each class of ideas, each faculty, is assigned to some peculiar part of the brain. That ingenious comparison mentioned in the panegyric of Mery, by Fontanelle, is very applicable to the brain. "We anatomists," he once said to a friend, "are like the porters in Paris, who are acquainted with the narrowest and most distant streets, but know little of what takes place in the houses.'

This fact we know-it is from the brain every sensation is felt; light, sound, odour, taste, are not felt in the organs they impress; it is the sensitive centre that sees, hears, smells, and tastes. You have only to interrupt,

man.

by compression upon the nerves, the communication between these wonderful strings and the brain, and all consciousness of the impression of objects is suspended. From these premises we deduce another patent truism, which cannot be too often repeated-"The nerves are the ." So absolutely is sensation the source of knowledge, that even the measure of understanding is according to the number and perfection of the organs of sense: and by successively depriving them of the intelligent being, we should lower at each step his intellectual nature; whilst the addition of a new sense to those we now possess, might lead us to a multitude of unknown sensations and ideas, a vast variety of new relations, and would greatly enlarge the sphere of our intelligence.

CHAPTER XV.

LONGEVITY OF OUR INTELLECTUAL GIANTS.-MENTAL INTOXICATION AND ITS SEQUENCES. THE ERRORS OF MEN OF ONE IDEA, EXCLUSIVES, ETC.

"Confess yourself to heaven,

Repent what's past, avoid what is to come,

And do not spread the compost on the weeds,

To make them ranker."

"The mother of mischief is no bigger than a midge's wing."

In all ages of the world, philosophers, divines, naturalists, statesmen, and other men, whose studies and avocations were especially calculated to develope and maintain the supremacy of the moral and intellectual powers, have been proverbially long-lived. In this connection we may name among the ancients, Homer, Hippocrates, Pythagoras, Plutarch, Plato, Thales, Xenophon, Newton, Galileo, Boyle, Leibnitz, Buffon, Humboldt, Brougham, Blumenbach, Hahnemann, Swedenborg, Sir E. Coke, Voltaire, and Fontanelle. All the persons just named, were distinguished by active and laborious habits; and some of them were intense, if not intemperate workers. The experience of a host of men, renowned for great attainment in morals, theology, and various departments of science, proves that an immense amount of human labour, when physiologically and scientifically carried out, can be accomplished by an individual of good natural capacity,

if the propensities are harmoniously balanced, and an ever-cheerful spirit is constantly cherished. Let us not forget, however, that essential differences in physical organisation, must not only make essential differences in mental capacity, but that few, very few, in our day, would bear all that extraordinary nervous tension as the individuals pre-named.

"Education forces nature itself." Our frame is almost everywhere interlaced with minute nerves, through which we feel pleasure or pain, as the case may be; but the nerves themselves have no feeling of their own: they do but report occurrences to the brain, where the real seat of sensation is located. The brain, in its turn, causes its will to be performed by the muscles, which receive the sovereign commands from head-quarters through the same medium of the nerves. This nervous organisation resembles a system of telegraph wires, converging from all quarters towards some mysterious counsel chamber, and thence again radiating to the several executive departments. When sensation leads to consequent action-as for example, when, upon feeling a blow, we knock down the striker in return-the result is brought about by a very complex series of operations. Thus the nerves report the incident-that is, the blow, to the brain; the brain perceives and resolves; its resolution is transmitted along other nerves to the proper muscles; and these, finally, by an independent mechanism of their own, perform the desired movements. Each of these operations requires time for its accomplishment, so brief, as to be inappreciable by ordinary observation. When a galvanic

shock is passed in a certain mode through the wrist, it produces both an involuntary impulse, and a natural desire to clench the fingers. The first effect is caused by the direct action of the galvanism upon the muscular tissue; for the second, the news must get to the brain, and the order issues thence back again to the muscles. One action is therefore immediate, while the other requires time the consequence is that a single shock occasions a double effect; the fingers are clenched twice— once involuntary, and once by command of the brain, with a distinct interval betwixt the two motions. We are told that a full-sized whale cannot feel a wound in its tail, until a second after it is inflicted, and takes another second in sending back orders to the tail to defend itself.

The sensorial, as well as the nerves of volition, cannot be overtaxed with impunity. A man requires play, as well as a boy. The overworked mind must be relieved, as well as the wearied body; and in certain circumstances, it is absolutely necessary to mental and bodily health, that we should be drawn out of ourselves and forced to relax our grasp upon anxious and depressing thoughts and cares, in a way which only cheerful society can effect. The body may indeed rest in an easy chair, or comfortable bed; but the mind will not do so. This quiet and repose are only more favourable to the indulgence of the prevalent and absorbing idea of the times; in the cheerful, innocent society alone, lies the remedy for over-work and anxiety. Neither is it necessary to become idiots; best definition of an idiot's mind we have to offer, is a mind locked up in a case, and the key of which cannot be

the