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, vigor, and symmetry of the animal frame; while the too studious scholar, and the indolent 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 carelessness.

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 recipe, (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 vigor. To promote cleanliness, I can recommend nothing preferable to bathing.

The frequent use of tepid 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. Colds in the young, and rheumatic and paralytic affections in the old, are all dispersed by this simple and delightful antidote. By such means the women of the East render their skins 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, to the Chateaux of France; from the Castles of Germany, to the Palaces of Muscovy; we may everywhere 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 anywhere 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;
Even from the body’s purity, the mind
Receives a secret sympathetic aid.”