excitement, this is enough. But there are few for whom it is sufficient; from seven to eight hours should be the average of your sleep. As the mind becomes powerful, and the body loosens its hold upon the mind, sleep flies away; intense mental occupation forbids long slumber; the mind says―

Yet we find, to be "a long and sound sleeper," is included by the oldest writers among the signs of longevity. What hours of time, however, are murdered through the turning again to slumber; What hours, my friends. have you and I murdered? Alas! alas! Have we lost one hour a day? Three hundred and sixty-five days in the year; ten years, and we lose almost twelve months. What Histories might we have read ! What languages have acquired! what studies might we have conquered ! Twelve months of clear entire labour thrown away. But, perhaps, instead of one hour a day-two, three, four; and what a squandering is here! Yes! if you would create and make time, Educate your Sleep!

EDUCATE YOUR DRESS. What a capricious animal is Man in this particular! The Horse, and the Sheep, and the Dog wear continually garments of one fashion, varied only by the warmth or coolness of the season; but the dress of Man shifts as the gales and winds of fashion blow around it, and every successive year beholds only some fresh enhancement of the ridiculous. The days of buckskin breeches have gone the days, we hope, of stays and

corsets are going; but the days of hats, those heavy weights, those cylindrical boxes, at which, if we saw them on the head of a savage, we should laugh so heartily-these remain, and tight cravats remain, preventing the flow of blood through the arteries, and compressing the muscles of the neck, and diminishing their size, and interfering with the vitalization of the brain. It would be much better for our mental and bodily health if we wore loose ties, and allowed the neck to be quite, or mostly exposed.

These are some of the chief habits that we designed to put before the reader; but yet, before we close this section, two or three more may, nay must, be given. There are certain moral characteristics which are very closely connected with a good physical state, and, therefore, with especial emphasis, we say,

EDUCATE YOUR CHASTITY! This is a subject so delicate to touch upon at all, yet so imperatively necessary to be insisted on, that there is great difficulty in treating of it. But fearfully true is it, that violated chastity is the brand, the burning brand upon character, self-respect, and manly energy and strength of will. How few withstand temptation! And oh! the loathsome horrors of the consequences of a revelry in the contaminated abodes of shame and lust! The consequences of licentiousness upon the mind are fearful; their ruin to its purity, to its firmness, its dignity, and frequently its sanity, succeeds the brief hours of shameful self-indulgence; or the long, long years of remorse sting, deeply sting, venomously sting beyond the hope of entire recovery. Fatal criminality, if indulged in,

how surely is it followed by the state of mind pathetically described by Burns :

"I waive the quantum of the sin,

The hazard of concealing;

But, och it hardens all the heart

And petrifies the feeling;

Or if conquered, and the indulgence thrown off, then through the long life to expiate the guilt with the penalties of self-laceration, in the language of Scripture, God "writing bitter things against us, and causing us to remember the sins of our youth."

These are some of the things included in the idea of selfeducation. These practices will produce a life not according to whim, but according to law-a life balanced-a life of repose; and so far as Humanity can be satisfied with its poor performances, a life of self-satisfaction; and the probability is, that it will lead to serenity and cheerfulness during life, and a happy and serene old age. The men who have followed such practices have usually lived to be old. True Philosophers we should expect would be old. Franklin lived to be eighty-four years of age, and when eighty-two, he says, "By living twelve years beyond David's (? Moses') period, I seem to have intruded myself into the company of posterity, when I ought to have been a-bed and asleep. Yet had I gone at seventy, it would have cut off twelve of the most active years of my life, employed, too, in matters of the greatest importance." So Copernicus, so Watt, so Goethe, so Wordsworth, and innumerable men like these, lived to be very old; and

it is right without coveting long life, it is right that we should so economise our strength, so plan our being, that while living we may live to a useful purpose, and that life may be shortened by no frivolity or imprudence of our

own.

THE VALUE OF A WORM.

241

THE VALUE OF A WORM.
An Episode.

AMONG the works of God, there is nothing contemptible, -nothing even insignificant. That which seems so, only seems so in consequence of our limited faculties. The more inquisitively we look at nature, the more occasion shall we have to exclaim with Wordsworth,—

"Pride,

Howe'er disguised in its own majesty,

Is littleness; and he who feels contempt

For any living thing, hath faculties

Which he has never used. Thought with that man
Is in its infancy."

We have no better illustration of the importance of apparently insignificant things than in the worm. Whoever beholds this creature delving and winding through the mould, probably has thought how useless a place it occupies in the scale of creation; and yet, what will our readers, who are unacquainted with the fact, think, when we assure them that the common earth-worm is at once shovel, plough, and harrow, and manure. Of all that soil which is the richest and most adapted for the gardener's purpose, there is scarcely any which has not passed