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1843.] nated as the consequences of the wear of that invaluable blessing, as we pro .aud tear of civilized, and especially of cced.” .city life, have actually supervened, there does not exist any remedy or He next alludes to the mental de antidote. The experience of every spondency produced by bad health, and summer, indeed, tells us, in language especially by disordered states of the admitting of no two-fold meaning, that digestive organs, which is far worse to -they may all ﬁnd reparation, in some bear than corporeal pain; and for the degree at least, in the relaxation and removal of this kind of melancholy, he corporeal exercise sought in a pure thinks there is no other moral or physi rural atmosphere. Look at the pale cal remedy of half so much efﬁcacy as and sickly aspect of the denizen of our a judicious tour : metropolis, as he sets forth on a trip wf a month for Saratoga and the White “ It is true that, in some cases of con Mountains,--for Niagara, Quebec, and the Great Lakes, or the medicinal ﬁrmed hypochondriacism, no earthly .springs abounding in the mountains of amusement, no change of scene, no Virginia. Behold him again on his mental impressions or excitement, no exercise of the body, can cheer the gloom that spreads itself over every object pre sented to the eye, or the imagination! With them, change of place is only variety ofwoe _cr2lum nan am'mum mutant. Yet, from two or three instances which have come within my knowledge, of the most invet eraie, and apparently indomitable hypo chondriacisrn being mitigated by travel ling, (though the mode of conducting the journey was far from good), I have little doubt that many cases of this kind, which ultimately end in insanity, or at least in deed, fortunate for the well-being of monomania, might be greatly ameliorat the civic inhabitant, that a temporary ed, if not completely cured, by a system exercise conducted on the foregoing abstraction from smoke, and dust, and of plan, and urged into operation by power din, is thus afforded ; and that one an ful persuasion, or even by force, if neces nual interval of relaxation is thus ex sary.”

return;

the

care-worn

countenance

“sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,” is now tinged with the glow of health. In this manner does the British metropolis annually pour out .its thousands of citizens, seeking health and recreation among the lakes of Cumberland, the lochs and moun tains of Scotland, the valleys of Wales, and the green hills of Erin; others swarm the routes that lead them to the Alps, or to the Appenines. It is, in

perienced in the cares of commerce, the thirst of gold, the struggles of competition, the madness of ambition, and the riot of dissipation. The salutary moral and physical effects, induced by change of air during travelling, are admirably and judiciously depicted by Dr. Johnson. As regards the moral eﬂ'ects, he says :

In other states of mental depression resulting from moral causes, as grief, disappointment, reverses in fortune, &c., similar beneﬁcial effects will fre quently follow. As the corporeal or gans often become deranged through the medium of the moral and intellec tual functions, so these last may, on the contrary, be made the medium of a salutary inﬂuence. The attention of nervous and hypochondriacal patients, it is well known, becomes so steadily ﬁxed on their own morbid feelings, that I to divert it from this point demands ex traordinary impressions. To effect this object, the circumstances of do mestic life in consequence of their mo notony are quite inadequate; while any attempt to reason with the sufferer, so far from alleviating, actually in

“If abstraction from the cares and -anxieties of life, from the perplexities of business, and, in short, from the operation of those conﬂicting passions which ha rass the mind and wear the body, be pos sible under any circumstances, it is likely to be so on such a journey as this, for which previous arrangements are made, and where a constant succession of new and interesting objects is presented to the eye and understanding, that powerfully arrests the attention and absorbs other 'feelings, leaving little time for reﬂection on the past, or gloomy anticipations of creases his distress, inasmuch as he the future. To this may be added, the suffers vexation from the belief, that hope of returning health, increased, as it his advisers are either unsympathizing generally will be, by the daily acquisition or incredulous as regards his torments: