Genre:

Letter; Extract

Publications extracted:

Beldou

Subjects:

Education, Health, Temperance, Disease, Nutrition, Natural History, Amusement, Error

    The writer introduces lengthy guidance on education, putatively written by a sexagenarian, extracted from 'a weekly journal' that has been discontinued. Advising against 'night studies', the writer gives a medical rationale, and notes: 'The faculty extol early rising as a powerful specific against disease'. The writer insists that time 'must be properly occupied', noting that 'Fine Arts, Natural History, and many other useful studies may employ spare hours'. (355) Warning against the dangers of excessive study, the writer relates of one 'learned gentleman' that he 'imagined the earth was a living animal, the flux and reflux of the sea, the effects of his respiration; men, and other creatures, insects, which fed upon it—bushes and trees, the bristles on his back, and the water or seas and rivers, a liquid which circulated in his veins' (356–57).