all the laws of animal organization. Every species of animals can be improved by care and science, and successive generations be made to approximate more and more near to the perfect type of their kind. If they can be improved, they can likewise be suffered to degenerate. Cannot the human race degenerate by the same want of care?

There is, however, this difference between the two cases. The animals are passive under the management of man. Their habits are simple and their appetites instinctive. Hurtful luxury is to them unknown. In training them to physical perfection, man meets with few obstacles. With the human being, the case is entirely different. Physical perfection must cost personal self denial, and if it be at all hereditary, the moral force and principle must be hereditary too, which is necessary to maintain the integrity of nature.

Where is one generation, even, to be found, who are willing to submit to that care and self denial, which are the price that must be paid for physical health and perfection? What are all the achievements of civilization, but a continual war upon the simplicity of nature? Wealth accumulates, and what is to be done

with it? Much of it will ordinarily go for the purchase of luxuries. And what are luxuries? The greatest enemies to health. Daily temptations to the overindulgence of the appetites. Is the rich man, whose cellars are filled with the choicest wines, and whose means can command every day the rarest delicacies of the market, to be expected to live as simply as the poor man; will he suffer his wines to ripen for another generation, and confine himself to a few simple articles of food? What is the use then of being rich? Will a lady, who has servants enough and to spare, be found willing to do their work for the sake of taking exercise? Will the lady, who keeps a carriage, walk for the sake of breathing the external air? Will her house

the world to do,

hold, who have nothing in be up with the dawn, to drink in vitality from the freshness of morning? Self-indul. gence will follow the enjoyment of ample means, and self-indulgence must pay the penalty of an enfeebled constitution. The evil of this would not be so great, if the bad consequences were confined to the individual, and did not descend to the next generation. But such is nature's law, that the constitution

is in some measure transmitted to the offspring, and those who adopt an enervating course of life are chargeable with the miseries they entail upon those who come after them.

To the tender mother and conscientious Christian, it must be a matter of abiding sorrow, if she has even the suspicion that the lives of those who are dear to her, have been in any degree shortened by her own want of care, her own neglect to secure in early life a firm and vigorous constitution, or at least to use her utmost endeavors to do so.

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Oh what a difference in a mother's happiness between the daily sight of a healthful or a sickly child! A blooming, vigorous child, is one of the most beautiful, gladdening objects that the human eye rests upon, especially if it be our own. Its gaiety is contagious, its glee and merriment almost make hearts feel again the warm current of youthful blood. We learn with it to enjoy the world afresh. We sympathize with the delight with which the young gaze upon a world to them in its prime. The flowers look more beautiful when we see them looking upon them with ecstasy, and scenes and prospects which have long become tame and indifferent to us smile

out once more, when we see them again through young eyes and buoyant spirits.

There is no brighter emblem of hope than a vigorous, well developed child. For it we anticipate all the possible enjoyments of this life. It possesses that which is the condition of all satisfaction in any thing, a strong physical constitution. The abounding goodness of the Creator has provided ample stores of happiness for every period of human life, from infancy to extreme old age, if we are but true to ourselves, and obedient to the physical as well as the moral laws of our nature.

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Education and enjoyment commence gether, and are intended to go hand in hand, till the soul, having accomplished the purposes of its earthly discipline, is prepared for a higher scene, and to enter upon a new career of progress and improvement. As long as the first of blessings, health, is preserved, the exercise of the senses is an unceasing source of delight. Every morning and every evening is a spectacle of grandeur and beauty, which art cannot imitate, and beyond which imagination cannot go. But to receive the grateful cheering which morning brings, it is necessary that the physical system should be in health.

The hum of business, the excitement of action, are calculated to heighten the pleasures of existence, but there must be firmness of nerve to make activity enjoyment. When the strength is sunk far below its natural level, the busy whirl of life passes over to a source of pain and annoyance. There is something soothing and tranquillizing in the approach of evening, but a slight depression of the animal spirits, transforms tranquillity to sadness.

All the impulses of nature are intended by God, as they strike upon the senses, to elicit the most delicious music. But then the harp must be in tune. If its chords are unstrung by ill health, the same external impulses grate harsh discord.

To the sickly child then, what a different prospect does life present! It wants the first and most indispensable condition of happiness. In it the idea of duty may be early developed, and those moral pleasures which spring from the discharge of duty, will be accessible; and some of the brightest ornaments of human nature have been persons debarred by ill health from almost all physical enjoyment. And some of the most successful in the va