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of beauty which they most cultivate. It is happy for a nation when this
mighty influence is employed in encouraging habits of life which are
beneficial or at least not gravely prejudicial to health. Nor is any
form of individual education more really valuable than that which
teaches the main conditions of a healthy life and forms those habits of
temperance and self-restraint that are most likely to attain it.

With its great recuperative powers Youth can do with apparent impunity
many things which in later life bring a speedy Nemesis; but on the other
hand Youth is pre-eminently the period when habits and tastes are
formed, and the yoke which is then lightly, willingly, wantonly assumed
will in after years acquire a crushing weight. Few things are more
striking than the levity of the motives, the feebleness of the impulses
under which in youth fatal steps are taken which bring with them a
weakened life and often an early grave. Smoking in manhood, when
practised in moderation, is a very innocent and probably beneficent
practice, but it is well known how deleterious it is to young boys, and
how many of them have taken to it through no other motive than a desire
to appear older than they are--that surest of all signs that we are very
young. How often have the far more pernicious habits of drinking, or
gambling, or frequenting corrupt society been acquired through a similar
motive, or through the mere desire to enjoy the charm of a forbidden
pleasure or to stand well with some dissipated companions! How large a
proportion of lifelong female debility is due to an early habit of tight
lacing, springing only from the silliest vanity! How many lives have
been sacrificed through the careless recklessness which refused to take
the trouble of changing wet clothes! How many have been shattered and
shortened by excess in things which in moderation are harmless, useful,
or praiseworthy,--by the broken blood-vessel, due to excess in some
healthy athletic exercise or game; by the ruined brain overstrained in
order to win some paltry prize! It is melancholy to observe how many
lives have been broken down, ruined or corrupted in attempts to realise
some supreme and unattainable desire; through the impulse of
overmastering passion, of powerful and perhaps irresistible temptation.
It is still sadder to observe how large a proportion of the failures of
life may be ultimately traced to the most insignificant causes and might
have been av