my childhood? It may be, that all of these reasons have had their influence. And yet if I were to state what seems to me to be the chief reasons, I should put down these two words-unconsciousness of which Thomas Carlyle has so nobly written, as one of the traits of genius-unconsciousness and humanity. He was unconscious of his greatness, and therefore would not have demanded reverence. He was an absolute impersonation of the whole spirit of humanity, and therefore he is, as it were, but a part of one's-self.

If anything were wanted to contrast with the nobleness of Shakspeare, it might be found in a horrible act of meanness perpetrated here, which must draw from every visiter to this place, scarcely less than his execration. Shakspeare's house fell, after his death, into the hands of a clergyman-whose name-but let his name perish! This man, being annoyed by the frequent visits of strangers to a mulberry tree before the house, first caused that to be cut down; and then, vexed by the levy of a poor rate upon the house, he angrily declared that it should never pay taxes again, and razed it to the ground!

CHAPTER VI.

BLENHEIM—OXFORD, ITS COLLEGES AND CHAPELS-NATIONAL HEALTH- -ILL HEALTH OF OUR PEOPLE IN AMERICA-CAUSES-REMEDIES.

BLENHEIM CASTLE AND PARK IN WOODSTOCK--the present of the nation to Marlborough after the battle of Blenheim. The structure is immense, built on three sides of a square; the principal range of building one hundred and eighty feet long, and the side ranges nearly as much. The park is not larger than some others, nor so large; but it appears more extensive, from the openings through the trees-not vistas-but openings through groves and clumps of trees, in various directions, and extending, apparently, almost as far as the eye can reach.

On the borders of an artificial lake, and upon a fine swell of land, stood the old royal residence, celebrated in Scott's novel, "Woodstock." Nothing now remains to mark the spot, but two large sycamores, planted when the castle was demolished, and Rosamond's well. There are some remarkable oaks with immense trunks (one twenty-seven feet in circumference), said to be as old as Henry the Seventh, standing in a distant part of the park. By the bye, the principal trees in all the parks of England, and all over the country, indeed, are the oak and the beech. There are some cedars of Lebanon, yews, &c.; but few elms, and none that I have seen to compare with ours on the Housatonic and Connecticut.

The chief attraction of this palace is found in its paintings. It is the first fine collection that I have seen. There is a suite of rooms, four or five hundred feet long, filled with pictures-many of them by the first masters, Vandyke, Rubens, Carlo Dolci, Titian, Teniers, Rembrandt, Guido, &c. Nothing, I think, struck me so much as a Madonna, by Carlo Dolci. There is also a very striking full-length portrait by Kneller, of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough-a very beautiful

face, but looking as if it might easily furnish expression to all the fiery passions ascribed to her.

The library surpasses every room that I have seen, for magnificence; the walls, the alcoves, the doorways, all of marble—the room probably two hundred feet long, and thirty feet high-seventeen thousand volumes. The library looks upon the private gardens.

The chapel contains a magnificent marble monument of the first Duke and Duchess of Marlborough.

On the road to Oxford, I saw for the first time, in travelling more than a thousand miles, wooden fences; in this country they are always stone, or turf, or hedges. Neither have I seen a shingle in the kingdom; but always slate, tiles, stone, or thatch. Multitudes of women are to be seen everywhere, gleaning the harvest fields-sometimes fifty, seventy, in a field. They pick up what remains after the reaper, straw by straw, till they get a large bundle, and then carry it home on their heads. The harvests consist of wheat, barley, and oats. No Indian corn is grown here.

OXFORD, August 14.-A city of spires, pinnacles, and Gothic towers, rising amid groves of trees. The twenty colleges, i. e. ranges and quadrangles of ancient buildings, mostly in the Gothic style, are amazingly impressive. Several of them have beautiful gardens and walks, and some of them are quite extensive.

It is in vain to begin with Oxford; a week would not suffice for a description; and no description could tell what a walk is among these glorious old quadrangles. Yet I cannot pass, without paying a tribute to the unequalled chapels of Oxford. In that of New College, there is an altar-piece, by Westmacott, well worth perusing-representing, in successive pieces, the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Descent from the Cross, the Resurrection, and the Ascension. The varying expression in the countenance of the Virgin is very striking and affecting. But the chapel of Magdalen College, the interior but just finished, is, in the substantial parts, the crowning beauty of all the chapels: the entire walls of polished stone-the screen of stone, most exquisitely carved; the whole wall over the altar, with three ranges of niches and canopies, and surmounted by a noli me tangere, all carved in the same

manner.

There is a noli me tangere-" touch me not"- by Mengs, in the All Souls' College chapel, about which I lingered for some time. The considerate, fixed, compassionate look of Jesus-superiority painted in the face, yet shaded by a human tenderness-and, in Mary's countenance, as she kneels and stretches out her hand, something of surprise, great eagerness repressed by deep awe-the delicate suffusion of the eye-a suffusion, not with tears, but as if the blood were starting through every fine and invisible pore, in and about the eye-it was something to gaze upon, and turn back to, for a last look.

I do not know that I shall find a more fit place than under the shadow of these college walls, to say some things that I wish to say on the subject of national health-for it especially concerns our students.

This subject drew my attention on landing in England, and has impressed me at every step. We have nothing among us like the aspect of health that prevails here-the solid, substantial, rotund, rubicund appearance of all classes. We are, in comparison, a thin, delicate, pale

faced people. We are, I am sometimes tempted to say, a nation of invalids in the comparison. The contrast is great and striking between the labouring classes of the two countries; but it is yet greater and more remarkable between the women, merchants, and men of study. I could scarcely have believed in the difference if I had not seen it. Besides, all health is relative, and "very well" in England must mean something, I think, considerably different from "very well" in America; not to say, also, that the "very well" of common parlance is frequently found, on more minute and friendly inquiry, to be quite distant from the truth.

Much, though not by any means all of this difference, is doubtless owing to our climate. When I was coming abroad I was desired by an eminent physician to inquire what it is, in the habits or circumstances of foreign students, that enables them to accomplish so much more study than we do, and at the same time to live longer and in the enjoyment of better health. I have inquired; and I certainly can find nothing in their habits that should give them such advantages over us. They are not more temperate and abstemious than we are; I should think the reverse is the fact. They seem to have no occasion for paying such regard to matters of regimen and diet as we do. They certainly talk less about them, and think less about them, than we do. There are no hardier or healthier students in the world than those of Germany; and it is well-known that they are not remarkably cautious about their modes of living. But then, in Europe, they do not experience the extremes of temperature, and especially the sudden changes, that we do in America. For myself, I have observed, that that temperature, whether hot or cold, which continues longest of an equable character, is most favourable to exertion. It is our autumn, and especially our spring, with its frequent and sudden alternations of sometimes twenty and thirty degrees in a day, that seems to tear the constitution to pieces. I lately met with an observation of the celebrated Blumenbach, to the same purpose. He was asked what was the cause of the extraordinary health of the German students: and he answered that it was the equable climate which they either had, or, by means of the Russian stove made for themselves, the year round.

There are, indeed, other differences. All thinking in our country is brought into immediate connexion with the actual interests of society, and is therefore apt to be more exciting, anxious and exhausting. The mind of the country runs to politics, controversies, reforms. We have but few students among us, who are quietly engaged in the pursuits of abstract science, without a thought beyond them. We have none perhaps like Blumenbach himself, spending life in pleasing studies of insects, in calm and retired contemplations of holy and beautiful nature; else we possibly might have some like him, who could study sixteen hours a day, and find a green old age at eighty.

There are yet other differences which affect a wider circle of society among us. We are an anxious people. The paths of competition in our country are wide and free. Hence no man among us is satisfied with his condition. Every man is striving to rise. Every man is ambitious; and many are discontented and sad. These things weigh upon the heart, and wear upon the springs of life. I do not say that this is a bad condition; I think it favourable to improvement; but I say

that it is trying both to health and virtue. At the same time we have fewer sports and holidays than any other people; and what we have are falling into disrepute. The national mind wants buoyancy; and buoyancy of spirit is one of the most essential springs of health.

I am inclined, also, to impute something to our modes of living. The Bonapartean style of dining doubtless prevails among our busy citizens, more than the physician would advise. The silent and awful celerity with which our meals are dispatched, is not altogether a steamboat or stage-house horror. But this rapidity of eating does not arise, I imagine, from any peculiar voracity of the American genus. We are a very busy people; and as such, I think, we arrange our times of eating very unadvisedly. Dinner in our cities at present is unfortunately in a state of transition, from the old customs of the New World to the new customs of the Old World. It has now arrived at the hour of three or four o'clock. It will be far better for health, when it has fairly reached the destined goal of six or seven; when the merchant or the student shall come to his dinner as the grand family reunion of the day -"all studies solemnly defied," all cares locked up in the countingroom-when he shall actually eat less because he has more time (the physician can explain that)-when there may be some chance of enlivening and elevating that humble but necessary occupation, with sprightly or grave discourse-and when it may be followed, not with a hasty walk to the warehouse, or an anxious retreat to the study, but with those domestic or social engagements and recreations which will promote digestion, cheerfulness, refinement, virtue, and happiness altogether.

I must add a word upon our modes of dress. With a climate twice as trying as that of England, we are, on this point, twice as negligent. Whether there is actual violence done to the form in the absurd attempt to make it genteel, I will not undertake to decide; but certainly the bust of an English woman shows that it never was, and never could have been subjected to those awful processes of girting, which must have been applied in many cases to produce what we see among us. At any rate, the fearful prevalence of consumption in our country, is an admonition of our duty on this subject of dress, that ought not to be disregarded. And especially in a country where no limits are set to fashionable imitation-where a man is very liable to mistake upon the door-step his domestic for his wife or daughter-this is a subject that comes home to every family, whether low or high, and comes too in the most palpable forms of interest-in the suffering and expense of sickness, and in the bitterness of bereavement.

But consumption and death are not the only alarming forms in which the subject of female health presents itself. Let any one look at the women of America, and, with all their far-famed delicacy and beauty, let him tell me what he thinks of them, as the mothers of future generations? What are the prospects of the national constitution and health, as they are to be read in the thousands of pale faces and slender forms, unfit for the duties of maternity, which we see around us? Let any one go with this question to their nurseries, and he will see the beginning of things to come. Let him go to the schools, and he will turn over another leaf in the book of prophecy. Oh! for a sight at home, of the beautiful groups of children that are constantly seen in England, with their rosy checks and robust frames!

I may seem to be speaking in terms more earnest and admonitory than there is occasion for; but I am persuaded that the public mind among us is by no means possessed with the full importance of this subject, nor with the extent of the evil referred to. I ask any man to cast about his thoughts upon the circle of his female acquaintances, and by some inquiry of their physician or of their particular friends to assist him if necessary, to ascertain what is the real state of their health. The result, I have no doubt, he will find to be, that three out of four, perhaps six out of seven, are, most of the year, unwell-ailing, complaining, feeble, suffering. Certainly more than half of the female population of our country are suffering, either with dyspepsy, or with nervous disorders, or with symptoms of consumption, or with some unaccountable failure of strength, or with some of the many other forms of disease incident to retired and sedentary habits. If any one thinks this statement extravagant, I will only again desire him to make out the list of his acquaintances, and see how it stands. Neither do I say, on the other hand, that everybody is well, in any country. But I do consider the case of our own, in this respect, to be very peculiar.*

If it be so, certainly it would not be easy with any words to overrate the importance of the subject. Why, it would not be difficult to swell it to the importance of the "temperance cause" itself-let it only have for a while the same exclusive and concentrated view fixed upon it. It is not posterity alone that comes into the account; it is not present misery alone; it is vice also. How many have been driven to that very intemperance of which so much is said, and so justly-how many have been repelled from their home, and carried to places of evil resort, by ill health, by low spirits, by a sad and complaining face there, that bereft home of all its charms!

Can nothing be done? If I had thought so, I would have said nothing. But I believe that much can be done, if attention can be aroused to the subject.

We have, doubtless, an unpropitious climate. It is unfavourable to the necessary out-of-door exercise. We have no such habits in this respect as the English-nothing approaching to them; and the difference is doubtless owing to our climate. In the summer it is too hot for exercise; in the winter it is too cold; in the spring it is too variable. The autumn, indeed, is favourable; but that is too short a season to form habits which shall bear up against the adverse influences of the whole year.

What, then, is to be done? I answer, that an effort must be made proportioned to the difficulties that are to be overcome. Exercise, out of doors, can be taken in our climate the year round; as there are some good examples to prove. I am told, indeed, that some improvement is already taking place in the habits of our American ladies in this respect.

I heard the other day the following fireside conversation :Doctor, will you please to look at that girl's tongue.

Doctor. It is very much coated.

Mother. It almost always is, more or less.

Doctor. Oh! I never saw the tongue of an American woman that was not. All. Why, what do you mean?

Doctor. I mean what I say; that I scarcely ever saw the tongue of an American female that did not show that mark of ill health.