tion to health, as a means of lessening this risk, is invaluable; and where it can be accomplished, should be never neglected. The young, whether well or ill in the broad sense of the words, are always advantaged by change of air. If brought up in a large town, an occasional change to the air of the country is almost necessary to give them strength and sound health. After illness, change of air is almost necessary to the young convalescent. It cannot be doubted, that many children fall into permanent and incurable disease, who might be restored to health if a judicious and timely change of air could be obtained for them. The change of air, which, in cases of comparative health, I would advise in strongest terms, is that embraced in constantly moving for the time from place to place, taking as much personal exercise during the journey as is found to be possible. I have often been struck with the fact, that an Englishman will readily make up his mind to set off to the Continent; go among a people whose language he is perhaps quite ignorant of,-whose habits are quite foreign to his own,-whose houses, except in the larger cities, may be such as to disgust his insular love and sense of cleanliness,-whose style of living may be such as to make him almost loathe the sight of food,*-whose country may or may not admit of *If it be read with some little allowance for love of country, and ardor scribendi, the following furnishes an apt illustration of this part of the text :-" Among the miseries of human life' might be ranked that of dining, or rather starving, at a German table d'hôte—and that, SANATORY EFFECTS OF TRAVELLING. 163 but an indifferent comparison with his own; and he may, at a considerable expense, have transported himself thither. And for what purpose? Perhaps, to set out on a pedestrian tour, with a stick and a too, in the midst of plenty! It is in such a place that the paradox is explained—“ inopem me copia fecit.' Sir F. Head too has remarked that the dish that is not acid is sure to be oily.' If this were all, we should have small reason to complain. The misfortune is, that not only oils and acids are liberally distributed by that infernal agent, the Maître de Cuisine, but every loathsome ingredient that the three kingdoms of nature can furnish is crammed into every pot and saucepan in his subterranean dominions. Some philosophers have endeavoured to distinguish man from other animals, and elevate him on the scale of created beings, on account of his cooking propensities. I think they entitle him to an additional seven years in Purgatory, if there be such a place, as our Catholic brethren affirm there is ! One thing is clear, however, that he is punished here below for the crimes which he commits against nature, by torturing dishes from their native taste,' and mingling all unutterable things in that box of Pandora-his accursed culinary cauldron ! "The succession is not less abhorrent to the English palate than the conposition of continental dishes. It is generally believed that animal and vegetable food is designed to be eaten together, otherwise nature would have furnished one side of the mouth with incisors and the other with grinders. In the 'continental system,' they take a very different view of things. When the vegetables (rather less than halfboiled, and swimming in oil) are on the table, there is no animal food-none, at least, that has not undergone more transubstantiations than Vishnou, and more metamorphoses than are recorded by Ovid. When meat smokes on the board, the vegetables have disappeared ! The animal that was browzing or bleating on the mountains the preceding day, and slaughtered in the night, is burnt to a cinder, or boiled till little more than bones and sinews are left :—in either case it is some degrees harder and tougher than well tanned sole-leather. As for poor Chanticleer, his ablation from the roost, decapitation in the court-yard, auto da fé in the kitchen, dissection in the salle à manger, and sepulture in some dark recess of a German stomach, occupy about three-quarters of an hour-the five acts of the tragedy being often enacted after the soup has gone its round of the table d'hôte?"-From Dr. James Johnson's account of "The Baths of Pfeffers." bundle, an undertaking which he might have performed at home, more cheaply, as improvingly, with many and evident greater advantages, and probably with as much benefit to his health; or he may have done this for the sake of bathing in thermal springs, which are probably not better suited to his case than those of Buxton or Bath,—or in order to drink saline mineral waters that are possibly not equal to those of Cheltenham, or chalybeate waters not better than those of Tunbridge Wells, or sulphuretted waters not comparable to those of Harrogate. It may be very well to say to the man of wealth and independence, "Medicine is really not calculated to effect your cure. Get together your travelling conveniences, your carriage, and your servants, and go to the Continent, and visit the Brunnens of Nassau,' or the Tyrol, or the South of France, or Rome, or Naples." But this sort of advice, if given to the great mass of the people of Great Britain, even of the middle classes, is only like filling their hands with water, which, thirsty though they be, is never likely to reach their lips,-or, suspending viands before their eyes, which are destined for ever to elude their famishing and eager grasp. It may be said to such, with sufficient truth, that they have little cause to envy their wealthier brethren the unbounded freedom of far and wide migration;-that, to taste all the pleasures which the best and most healthgiving of all kinds of travelling affords, they need not to leave their native land; but, with some shillings or pounds, according to their means and their SANATORY EFFECTS OF TRAVELLING. 165 expectations, and a bundle, containing a change or two of linen, and an extra pair of shoes, hung over the shoulder by a stick, they may wander over the Highlands of Scotland, over Cumberland, or Westmoreland, or Wales, or last, but not least, Derbyshire; and admiring the beauties of the woods and plains, or the grandeur of unequalled or unsurpassed mountain scenery,-warmed into a taste for the sublime and the beautiful, by seeing Nature in all her inimitable, unartificial, and untouched grandeur, and by seeing her decorated, and made more useful, by the hand of man,-they may, after a ramble of weeks or months, as may be, return home with the assured conviction, that what travelling and change of air and scene can do for man's health, they have done for theirs. It is this sort of travelling; this total removal from ordinary and every day habits; this constant exercise; this continual change of air; which does most good; that, if the man is in moderate health, is calculated to give vigour to his system, freedom to his limbs, and clearness to his mind; that has, like magic, uprooted many a case of long continued dyspepsia, and caused many a case of chronic disordered action, threatening to degenerate into something worse, to be no longer felt. Change of air may be too great; but it cannot be too frequent, if the powers of the system are not materially impaired. In many, the majority of the cases of indigestion, the spirits are either very much depressed, or the mind is in a state of highly morbid excitability. There are few diseases, in which the remarkable sympathy which subsists between the body and the mind is so clearly seen as in dyspepsia. The consequence of this sympathy is, that the patient looks at every thing in the darkest and blackest light; magnifies trifles into affairs of moment; is tormented with a constant, cavilling, wretched sensitiveness. It is necessary, then, not only that the body should be exercised, and its muscles actively used; not only that the stomach should be as little distressed by work as possible; not only that change of air, frequent change of air, should be enjoyed; but it is necessary, moreover, that the mind should be taken away from its cares and troubles, from the customary sources of vexation; and be amused with variety, without knowing how: an amusement that is well furnished by the fresh scenes, the fresh faces, and the various and numberless interesting matters for observation, that a tract of country before unknown to him must ever present, even to the commonest observer. Travelling, and especially pedestrian travelling, presents, among its many other points of excellence, this, in a remarkable degree. It acts directly on the mind as well as on the body. I am satisfied that if the measure were tried in cases of hypochondriacism, and even in many a case of incipient insanity, numbers would be restored to their reason, their families, and their friends. The effect of such travelling can |