Cheyne, more than a hundred years ago, "that would have a clear Head, must have a clean Stomach."*

Full feeding lessens the clearness and activity of the intellectual faculties. An intellectual process which we could carry out with ease before, we might find very difficult and embarrassing after dinner. Hence gluttonous men, those who live under the dominion of their stomachs, are very apt to be stupid in their intellects.

"Fat paunches have lean pates; and dainty bits

Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits."t

That the particular nature of our food, as well as its quantity, may also exercise an important influence upon the strength and character of the understanding will, I think, hardly be disputed. But this subject is altogether too wide for the present volume.

* On Health and long Life.

† Love's Labor Lost.

CHAPTER VI.

EVILS TO BE APPREHENDED FROM THE INORDINATE EXERCISE OF THE INTELLECT IN EARLY YEARS.

PREMATURE and forced exertions of the mental faculties must always be at the risk of the physical constitution. Parents, urged on by a mistaken ambition for their intellectual progress, are extremely apt to overtask the minds of their offspring, and thus may often not only defeat their own aims, but prepare the foundation of bodily infirmity, and early decay. Such a course is, moreover, repugnant to the plainest dictates of Nature, to be read in the instinctive propensities of the young, which urge so imperiously to physical action.

Exercise, in early existence especially, is a natural want, being then essential to train the muscles to their requisite functions, and to insure to the frame its full development and just proportions. So strong, indeed, is this tendency to motion, that few punishments are more grievous to childhood, than such as impose restraints upon it. The young, in truth, of all animals of the higher orders, equally display this necessary propensity. Liberate the calf or the

lamb from his confinement, and what a variety of muscular contractions will he not immediately exhibit in his active and happy gambols? He is herein but discovering the instincts of his nature, just as much as while cropping the grass and herbage. In tasking, therefore, the functions of the brain, and restraining, consequently, those of the muscles, in early life, we act in contravention to the most obvious laws of the animal constitution.

I do not mean that the powers of the mind are to be absolutely neglected at this period. They are certainly to be unfolded, but then prudently, and in just correspondence only with the development of the physical organization. To look for ripeness of intellect from the soft, delicate, and immature brain of childhood, is as unreasonable as it would be to expect our trees to yield us fruit while their roots were unconfirmed, and their trunks and branches succulent. "Nature," as was said by Rousseau, "intended that children should be children before they are men; and if we attempt to pervert this order, we shall produce early fruit, which will have neither maturity nor savor, and which soon spoils; we shall have young learned men, and old children. Infancy has an order of seeing, thinking, and feeling, which is proper to it. Nothing is more foolish than to wish to make children substitute ours for theirs; and I would as soon require a child to be five feet high, as to require judgment at ten years of age."*

In all the examples on record, I believe, in which chil

* Cited by Tourtelle.

dren have reached maturity much earlier than in the common course of nature-as at six or eight years-old age and decay have been correspondently premature. In Dr. Millingen's Curiosities of Medical Experience, is cited "an account of a surprising boy, who was born at Willingham, near Cambridge, and upon whom the following epitaph was written-Stop, traveller, and wondering, know, here buried lie the remains of Thomas, son of Thomas and Margaret Hall, who, not one year old, had the signs of manhood; at three, was almost four feet high, endued with uncommon strength, a just proportion of parts, and a stupendous voice; before six, he died, as it were, at an advanced age."" According to the surgeon who viewed him after death, the corpse presented every appearance of decrepit old age.

But, setting aside the hazard to the physical constitution, nothing is in reality gained, as respects the intellect, by such artificial forcing. On the contrary, the energies of the mind being thus prematurely exhausted, it seldom happens that these infant prodigies, which raise such proud hopes in the breasts of parents and friends, display even mental mediocrity in their riper years. In some cases insanity, or even idiocy, has been the melancholy result of such unnatural exertion of the organ of thought, while yet delicate and unconfirmed.

Furthermore, those even whose minds naturally, or independent of education, exhibit an unusual precociousness, rarely fulfil the expectations they awaken-either falling the victims of untimely decay,-

"So wise so young, do ne'er live long,"

or else, reaching early the limit of their powers, they stop short in their bright career, and thus, in adult age, take a rank very inferior to those whose faculties were more tardy in unfolding, and whose early years were, consequently, less flattering. That mind will be likely to attain the greatest perfection, whose powers are disclosed gradually, and in due correspondence with the advancement of the other functions of the constitution. It is a familiar fact, that trees are exhausted by artificially forcing their fruit; and, likewise, that those vegetables which are slow in yielding their fruit, are generally stronger and more lasting than such as arrive earlier at maturity.

"We have frequently seen, in early age," observes a French writer on health, "prodigies of memory, and even of erudition, who were, at the age of fifteen or twenty, imbecile, and who have continued so through life. We have seen other children, whose early studies have so enfeebled them, that their miserable career has terminated with the most distressing diseases, at a period at which they should only have commenced their studies." *

*Tourtelle.