destructive of beauty, but the period of such repletion is full of other dangers. Long fasting wastes the powers of digestion, and weakens the springs of life. In this enfeebled state, at the hour when nature intends we should prepare for general repose, we put our stomach and animal spirits to extraordinary exertion. Our vital functions are overtasked and overloaded ;-we become hectic-for observation strongly declares that invalid and delicate persons should rarely eat solids after three o'clock in the day, as fever is generally the consequence; and thus, almost every complaint that distresses and destroys the human frame, may be engendered. When hunger calls, obey; nor often wait Besides, when we add to this evil the present mode of bracing the digestive part of the body in what is called long stays, to what an extent must reach the baneful effects of a protracted and abundant repast? Indeed, I am fully persuaded that long fasting, late dining, and the excessive repletion then taken into the exhausted stomach, with the tight pressure of steel and whalebone on the most susceptible parts of the frame then called into action, and the midnight, nay, morning hours, of lingering pleasure, are the positive causes of colds taken, bilious fevers, consumptions, and atrophies. By the means enumerated, the firm texture of the constitution is broken, and the principles of health being in a manner decomposed, the finest parts fly off, and the dregs maintain the poor survivor of herself in a sad kind of artificial existence. Delicate proportion gives place either to miserable leanness or shapeless fat. The once fair skin assumes a pallid rigidity, or a bloated redness, which the vain possessor would still regard as the roses of health and beauty. To repair these ravages, comes the aid of padding, to give shape where there is none; long stays, to compress into form the chaos of flesh; and paints off all hues, to rectify the disorder of the complexion. But useless are these attempts. If dissipation, disease, and immoderation, have wrecked the fair vessel of female charms, it is not in the power of Esculapius himself to refit the shattered bark; or of the Syrens, with all their songs and wiles, to conjure its battered sides from the rocks, and make it ride the seas in gallant trim again. It is with pleasure that I turn from this ruin of all that is beauteous and lovely, to the cheering hope of preserving every charm unimpaired; and by means which the most ingenuous mind need not blush to acknowledge. The rules, I repeat, are few. First, Temperance: a well timed use of the table, and so moderate a pursuit of pleasure, that the midnight ball, assembly, and theatre, shall not too frequently recur. My next specific, is that of gentle and daily Exercise in the open air. Nature teaches us, in the gambols and sportiveness of the young of the lower animals, that bodily exertion is necessary for the growth, vigour, and symmetry of the animal frame; while the too studious scholar, and the indolent 90 Preservation of Beauty. man of luxury, exhibit in themselves the pernicious consequences of the want of exercise. This may be almost always obtained, either on horseback or on foot, in fine weather; and when that is denied, in a carriage. Country air in the fields, or in gardens, when breathed at proper hours, is an excellent bracer of the nerves, and a sure brightener of the complexion. But these hours are neither under the mid-day sun in summer, when its beams scorch the skin and ferment the blood; nor beneath the dews of evening, when the imperceptible damps, saturating the thinly-clad body, send the wanderer home infected with the disease that is to lay her, ere a returning spring, in the silent tomb! Both these periods are pregnant with danger to delicacy and carefulness. The morning, about two or three hours after sunrise, is the most salubrious time for a vigorous walk. But, as the day advances, if you choose to prolong the sweet enjoyment of the open air, then the thick wood or shady lane will afford refreshing shelter from the too intense heat of the sun.. In short, the morning and evening dew, and the unrepelled blaze of a summer noon, must alike be ever avoided as the enemies of health and beauty. "Fly, if you can, these violent extremes Of air; the wholesome is nor moist nor dry."-ARMSTRONG. Cleanliness, my last receipe, (and which is, like the others, applicable to all ages;) is of most powerful efficacy. It maintains the limbs in their pliancy, the skin in its softness, the complexion in its lustre, the eyes in their brightness, the teeth in their purity, and the constitution in its fairest vigour. To promote cleanliness, I can recommend nothing preferable to bathing. The frequent use of tepid [warm] baths is not more grateful to the sense, than it is salutary to the health, and to beauty. By such ablution, all accidental corporeal impurities are thrown off; cutaneous obstructions removed; and while the surface of the body is preserved in its original brightness, many threatening disorders are removed or prevented. By such means the women of the East render their skin softer than that of the tenderest babes in this climate, and preserve that health which sedentary confinement would otherwise destroy. This delightful and delicate Oriental fashion is now, I am happy to say, prevalent almost all over the continent. From the Villas of Italy, the Chateaux of France; from the Castles of Germany, to the Palaces of Muscovy; we may every where find the marble bath under the vaulted portico or the sheltering shade. Every house of every nobleman or gentleman, in every nation under the sun, excepting Britain, possesses one of those genial friends to cleanliness and comfort. The generality of English ladies seem to be ignorant of the use of any bath larger than a wash-hand basin. This is the more extraordinary to me, when I contemplate the changeable temperature of the climate, and consider the corresponding alterations in the bodily feelings of the people. By abruptly checking the secretions, it produces those chronic and cutaneous diseases so peculiar to our nation, and so heavy a cause of complaint. This very circumstance renders baths more necessary in England than any where else; for as this is the climate most subject to sudden heats and colds, rains and fogs, tepid immersion is the only sovereign remedy against their usual morbific effects. Indeed, so impressed am I with the consequence of their regimen, that I strongly recommend to every lady to make a bath as indispensable an article in her house as a looking-glass. "This is the purest exercise of health. The kind refresher of the summer heats;" It may be remarked en passant, that friction applied to the skin in the bath, is an excellent substitute for exercise, when this is impracticable out of doors. FALSE ATTITUDES. THE false postures and attitudes, taken by young persons at school, or when engaged in some particular trade or labour, often become a cause of distorted spine and other deformities—a state to be deplored in all, but more especially pitiable in the female sex. In the remarks which we propose making on the causes, prevention, and hygeinic treatment of these deformities, we shall content ourselves with the arguments and illustrations in the work of Surgeon Duffin,* to which we have already directed the attention of our readers, and which we again recommend to the attentive perusal of all parents, guardians, and instructors, on whose knowledge of this matter much will depend, before professional assistance is invoked.' For the better understanding of the subject by our readers, we shall premise à few particulars respecting the structure of the parts more immediately affected in spinal distortion. We cannot, of course, be expected, in this place, to speak with professional or technical precisión; but while endeavouring to be plain, we hope to be accurate; at least enough so for hygeinic purposes. The back bone is a pillar, built of twenty-four short cylindrical bones, called vertebræ, piled one upon another, and extended from the large solid bones that support the body, when sitting erect, to the lowest part of the head. We We say nothing for the present of the projections from the vertebræ, but proceed to remark that the body, as the centre-part is called, does not directly touch the one above, or the one below it-there intervenes a strong elastic substance of considerable thickness, which is girt round by a powerful ligamentous band. This substance, called technically intervertebral, retains the two vertebrae to which it belongs, continually together; and though, strictly speaking, it prevents all immediate motion of one bone of the spine upon another, permits of the most extensive motion of the whole column of bones taken conjointly, by means of the great elastic power of which it is possessed. * The Influence of Modern Physical Education of Females, in producing and confirming Deformity of the Spine. New-York, Charles G. Francis, 1830.. VOL. II.-12 To which ever side the body inclines, this substance readily yields, and returns in a moment to its proper position, by a very powerful spring, when the weight of the body and force of the muscular contraction cease to operate. As this substance is continually yielding under pressure during the day, a person of ordinary stature, will often be found considerably taller in the morning, than at night. In old age, the body is shorter than in youth, from the greater condensation of this substance; and its inclination forwards, in persons advanced' in years, depends upon the yielding of this compressible substance to the weight of the superincumbent structure. Hence, any undue inclination to either side, during life, if frequent, constant, or protracted, will cause a certain diminution in the thickness of this substance on the side to which the body inclines, accompanied by a proportionate rising of the same, on the opposite side, and will in the course of time produce permanent distortion of the whole column of bones. This effect will be more easily produced during childhood, when the bones are in a state of growth, the ligaments more yielding, and the intervertebral substance, peculiarly soft. "A tumour on the head or jaw," remarks Mr. Charles Bell, "which makes a child carry the head to one side, or constant stooping, such as is used by a girl in working at the tambour, or the carrying of a weakly child always on one arm by a negligent or awkward nurse, will cause in time a fixed and irremediable distortion." The moving power of the vertebræ, or back bone, consists in several layers of muscles. On each side of the spine is felt a mass or cushion of flesh, the muscles of which are attached to various projections from the individual bones, (vertebræ.) By the joint and concurrent action of these muscular masses, the vertical position is maintained; and according as one or other side, or a particular portion of either, contracts, the body is bent in that direction. The muscles on the front part of the body bend it forward, when they are called into contraction by volition. Now it must be very obvious, that by a long voluntary contraction of the muscles on one side of the back bone, as when we lean in that direction for a length of time, in writing or drawing at a desk, or when engaged at some particular handicraft employment, they acquire, eventually, a diseased habit. They become in à measure permanently contracted-while those on the opposite side, froin being in a state of rest, become weaker than natural, and are unable to draw the spine to their side, and to restore the vertical position. The effect of this posture is, as already said, to compress the intervertebral elastic substance on the side towards which the body leans, and finally to render it firmer and thinner, than on the opposite side. There is then formed a lateral curvature, which becomes fixed spinal distortion, and a raising of the shoulder on the same side with the prominence of the spine. The natural consequence of sitting long in the same posture, is an attempt to rest the muscles by leaning a little, to one or other side; and hence a risk of deformity in young persons, who are kept too long a time in school, of acquiring a permanently false attitude, and of suffering from spinal deformity. The risk will be increased, if the person be of a feeble and sickly habit of body It has been a question, much, agitated of late years, whether the punishment of strict seclusion from all intercourse with his fellow-prisoners, could be adopted in our penal code, without manifest injury to the health, and unsettling of the moral and reasoning faculties of the individual thus confined. The letters of Mr. Vaux and Dr. Bache, published in the eighth number of the Journal of Law, for October 27th, 1830, are so far conclusive in favour of the experiment made, during the first year, in the new penitentiary. We borrow the language of our friends, the editors of that Journal, in speaking of the former of these gentlemen, in order to satisfy our distant readers of the nature of the authority which is invoked, when his name is made use of, on such occasions as the present. "Mr. Vaux himself, is well known in this community as an active and efficient promoter of the cause of charity and humanity. In his notices of the original and successive efforts to improve the discipline of the prison of Philadelphia, and to reform the criminal code of Pennsylvania, may be found a concise, but comprehensive history of the origin and progress of the penitentiary system of Pennsylvania; and, in his several letters to Mr. Roscoe, a satisfactory statement and defence of the principles on which that system is founded." Mr. Varix, in the letter above alluded to, addressed to bishop White, Thomas Wistar, and Zachariah Poulson, the only surviving members of the original Philadelphia Society for alleviating the miseries of public prisons, says: "Neither melancholy, nor madness, nor refined malignity, nor unyielding obstinacy, have appeared among the prisoners, nor any epidemic disease assailed them. Dispositions the very reverse of these are manifested, and no instance of physical distemper, incident to the mode of treatment, has shown itself in the prison." To the correctness of the following opinion, entertained by Mr. Vaux of one of our esteemed professional brethren, we can, ourselves, bear most ample and willing testimony-"The chief object of these remarks is to |