hat God made the
physical universe. Let me, I pray you, appeal to your common sense for a
moment. When any one chooses a horse or a dog, whether for strength, for
speed, or for any other useful purpose, the first thing almost to be
looked at is the girth round the ribs; the room for heart and lungs.
Exactly in proportion to that will be the animal's general healthiness,
power of endurance, and value in many other ways. If you will look at
eminent lawyers and famous orators, who have attained a healthy old age,
you will see that in every case they are men, like the late Lord
Palmerston, and others whom I could mention, of remarkable size, not
merely in the upper, but in the lower part of the chest; men who had,
therefore, a peculiar power of using the diaphragm to fill and to clear
the lungs, and therefore to oxygenate the blood of the whole body. Now,
it is just these lower ribs, across which the diaphragm is stretched like
the head of a drum, which stays contract to a minimum. If you advised
owners of horses and hounds to put their horses or their hounds into
stays, and lace them up tight, in order to increase their beauty, you
would receive, I doubt not, a very courteous, but certainly a very
decided, refusal to do that which would spoil not merely the animals
themselves, but the whole stud or the whole kennel for years to come. And
if you advised an orator to put himself into tight stays, he, no doubt,
again would give a courteous answer; but he would reply--if he was a
really educated man--that to comply with your request would involve his
giving up public work, under the probable penalty of being dead within
the twelvemonth.

And how much work of every kind, intellectual as well as physical, is
spoiled or hindered; how many deaths occur from consumption and other
complaints which are the result of this habit of tight lacing, is known
partly to the medical men, who lift up their voices in vain, and known
fully to Him who will not interfere with the least of His own physical
laws to save human beings from the consequences of their own wilful
folly.

And now--to end this lecture with more pleasing thoughts--What becomes of
this breath which passes from your lips? Is it merely harmful; merely
waste? God forbid! God has forbidden that anything should be merely
harmful or merely waste in this so wise and well-made world. The
carbonic acid which passes from your lips at every breath--ay, even that
which oozes