CHAPTER VII. Advice to the Melancholy. If you are melancholy for the first time, you will find upon a little inquiry, that others have been melancholy many times, and yet are cheerful now. If you have been melancholy many times, recollect that you have got over all those times; and try if you cannot find out means of getting over them better. Do not imagine that mind alone is concerned in your bad spirits. The body has a great deal to do with these matters. The mind may undoubtedly affect the body; but the body also affects the mind. There is a re-action between them; and by lessening it on either side, you diminish the pain on both. If you are melancholy, and know not why, be assured it must arise entirely from some physical weakness; and do your best to strengthen yourself. The blood of the melancholy man is thick and slow; the blood of a lively man is clear and quick. Endeavor therefore to put your blood in motion. Exercise is the best way to do it; but you may also help yourself, in moderation, with wine, or other excitements. Only you must take care so to proportion the use of any artificial stimulus, that it may not render the blood languid by over-exciting it at first; and 'hat you may be able to keep up, by the natural stimulus only, the help you have given yourself by the artificial. Regard the bad weather as somebody has advised us to handle the nettle. In proportion as you are delicate with it, it will make you feel; but Grasp it like a man of mettle, Do not the less, however, on that account, take all reasonable precaution and arms against it, your boots, &c., against wet feet, and your great-coat or umbrella against the rain. It is timidity and flight, which are to be deprecated, not proper armor for the battle. The first will lay you open to defeat, on the least attack. A proper use of the latter will only keep you strong for it. Plato had such a high opinion of exercise, that he said it was a cure even for a wounded conscience. Nor is this opinion a dangerous one. For there is no system, even of superstition, however severe or cruel in other matters, that does not allow a wounded conscience to be curable by some means. Nature will work out its rights and its kindness some way or other, through the worst sophistications; and this is one of the instances in which she seems to raise herself above all contingencies. The conscience may have been wounded by artificial or by real guilt; but then she will tell it in those extremities, that even the real guilt may have been produced by circumstances. It is her kindness alone, which nothing can pull down from its predominance. See fair play between cares and pastimes. Diminish your artificial wants as much as possible, whether you are rich or poor; for the rich man's, increasing by indulgence, are apt to outweigh even the abundance of his means; and the poor man's diminution of them renders his means the greater. On the other hand, increase all your natural and healthy enjoyments. Cultivate your afternoon fire-side, the society of your friends, the company of agreeable children, music, theatres, amusing books, an urbane and generous gallantry. He who thinks any innocent pastime foolish, has either to grow wiser or is past the ability to do so. In the one case, his notion of being childish is itself a childish notion. In the other, his importance is of so feeble and hollow a cast, that it dare not move for fear of tumbling to pieces. A friend of ours, who knows as well as any other man how to unite industry with enjoyment, has set an excellent example to those who can afford the leisure, by taking two Sabbaths every week instead of one,-not Methodistical Sabbaths, but days of rest which pay true homage to the Supreme Being by enjoying his creation. One of the best pieces of advice for an ailing spirit is to go to no sudden extremes-to adopt no great and extreme changes in diet or other habits. They may make a man look very great and philosophic to his own mind; but they are not fit for a being to whom custom has been truly said to be a second nature. Dr. Cheyne may tell us that a drowning man cannot too quickly get himself out of the water; but the analogy is not good. If the water has become a second habit, he might almost as well say that a fish could not get too quickly out of it. Upon this point, Bacon says that we should discontinue what we think hurtful by little and little. And he quotes with admi ration the advice of Celsus: that "a man do vary and inter change contraries, but rather with an inclination to the more benign extreme." "Use fasting," he says, "and full eating, but rather full eating; watching and sleep, but rather sleep; sitting and exercise, but rather exercise, and the like; so shall nature be cherished, and yet taught masteries." We cannot do better than conclude with one or two other passages out of the same Essay, full of his usual calm wisdom "If you fly physic in health altogether, it will be too strange for your body when you need it." (He means that a general state of health should not make us over-confident and contemptuous of physic; but that we should use it moderately if required, that it may not be too strange to us when required most.) "If you make it too familiar, it will have no extraordinary effect when sickness cometh. I commend rather some diet for certain seasons, than frequent use of physic, except it be grown into a custom; for those diets alter the body more, and trouble it less." "As for the passions and studies of the mind," says he, “avoid envy; anxious fears, anger fretting inwards, suɔtle and knotty inquisitions, joys and exhilarations in excess, sadness not com municated" (for as he says finely, somewhere else, they who keep their griefs to themselves, are "cannibals of their own hearts"). "Entertain hopes; mirth rather than joy" (that is to say, cheerfulness rather than boisterous merriment); “variety of delights rather than surfeit of them; wonder and admiration, and therefore novelties; studies that fill the mind with splendid and illustrious objects, as histories, fables, and contemplations of nature." CHAPTER VIII. Charles Brandon and Mary Queen of France. He was ar THE fortune of Charles Brandon was remarkable. honest man, yet the favorite of a despot. He was brave, handsome, accomplished, possessed even delicacy of sentiment; yet he retained the despot's favor to the last. He even had the perilous honor of being beloved by his master's sister, without having the least claim to it by birth: and yet, instead of its destroying them both, he was allowed to be her husband. Charles Brandon was the son of Sir William Brandon, whose skull was cleaved at Bosworth by Richard the Third, while bearing the standard of the Duke of Richmond. Richard dashed at the standard, and appears to have been thrown from his horse by Sir William, whose strength and courage, however, could not save him from the angry desperation of the king. But Time, whose wheeles with various motion runne, Who marries Richmond's daughter, born betweene Sir John Beaumont's Bosworth Field. The father's fate must have had its effect in securing the fortunes of the son. Young Brandon grew up with Henry the Seventh's children, and was the playmate of his future king and bride. The prince, as he increased in years, seems to have carried the idea of Brandon with him like that of a second self; and the princess, whose affection was not hindered from becoming personal by anything sisterly, nor, on the other hand, allowed to waste itself in too equal a familiarity, may have felt a double impulse given to it by the improbability of her ever being suffered to become his wife. Royal females, in most countries, have certainly none of the advantages of their rank, whatever the males may have Mary was destined to taste the usual bitterness of their lot; but she was repaid. At the conclusion of the war with France, she was married to the old king Louis the Twelfth, who witnessed from a couch the exploits of her future husband at the tournaments. The doings of Charles Brandon that time were long remembered. The love between him and the young queen was suspected by the French Court; and he had just seen her enter Paris in the midst of a gorgeous procession, like Aurora come to marry Tithonus. Brandon dealt nis chivalry about him accordingly with such irresistible vigor, that the dauphin, in a fit of jealousy, secretly introduced into the contest a huge German, who was thought to be of a strength incomparable. But Brandon grappled with him, and with seeming disdain and detection, so pummelled him about the head with the hilt of his sword, that the blood burst through the vizor. Imagine the feelings of the queen, when he came and made her an offering of the German's shield! Drayton, in his Heroical Epistle, we know not on what authority, tells us, that on one occasion during the combats, perhaps this particular one, she could not help crying out, "Hurt not my sweet Charles," or words to that effect. He then pleasantly represents her as doing away suspicion by falling to commendations of the dauphin, and affecting not to know who the conquering knight was an ignorance not very probable; but the knights sometimes disguised themselves purposely. The old king did not long survive his festivities. He died in less than three months, on the first day of the year 1515; and Brandon, who had been created Duke of Suffolk the year before, reappeared at the French court, with letters of condolence, and more persuasive looks. The royal widow was young, beautiful, and rich; and it was likely that her hand would be sought by many princely lovers; but she was now resolved to reward herself for her sacrifice, and in less than two months she privately married her first love. The queen, says a homely but not mean poet (Warner, in his Albion's England), thought that to cast too many doubts Were oft to erre no lesse Than to be ash: and thus a cout |