The cold bath is unsafe in infancy and old age, in plethoric habits, in spitting of blood, in eruptive diseases, in great debility, during pregnancy, and in case of weakness from any existing local disease of an acute nature; but in nearly all other states of the body, cold water is the best stimulant of the nerves, the finest quickener of every function, the most delightful invigorator of the whole frame, qualifying both brain and muscles for their utmost activity, and clearing alike the features and the fancy from clouds and gloom.
Cold may always be safely applied when the surface is heated by warmth from without, as from hot water or the vapor bath, and, indeed, whenever the body is hot without previous exercise of an exhausting kind. Probably, the method adopted by the Romans, in their palmiest days, of plunging into the baptisterium, or cold bath, immediately after the vapor or hot bath, or, as a substitute, the pouring of cold water over the head, was well calculated to invigorate the system, and give a high enjoyment of existence. The Russian practice of plunging into a cold stream, or rolling in the snow, after the vapor-bath, is said to be favorable to longevity. The Finlanders are accustomed to leave their bathing-houses, heated to 167°, and to pass into the open air without any covering whatever, even when the thermometer indicates a temperature 24° below zero, and that without any ill effect, but, on the contrary, it is said that by this habit they are quite exempted from rheumatism. Would that the luxury of bathing, so cheaply enjoyed by all classes of old Rome, were equally available among ourselves. The conquerors of the world introduced their baths wherever they established their power; but we have repudiated the blessings of water in such a form, and now the Russian boor and the Finnish peasant, the Turk, the Egyptian, the basest of people, and the barbarians of Africa, shame even the inhabitants of England's metropolis; for every where but in our land, though the duty of cleanliness may not be enjoined as next to godliness, as with us, yet the benefit and the luxury of the bath are freely enjoyed, as the natural means of ablution and of health.
"With us the man of no complaint demands
The warm ablution, just enough to clear
The sluices of the skin, enough to keep
The body sacred from indecent soil.
Still to be pure, even did it not conduce
(As much it does) to health, were greatly worth
Your daily pains."—Armstrong.
POVERTY OF THE ENGLISH BAR.
With the exception, perhaps, of the lower order of the working clergy, there is no class of the community, as a body, so desperately poor as the bar. If it were not for extrinsic aids, one-half, at least, of its members must necessarily starve. Of course a considerable number of them have private property or income, and in point of fact, as a general rule, he who goes to the bar without some such assistance and resource is a fool—and probably a vanity-stricken fool—a fond dreamer about the
Eloquium ac famam Demosthenis aut Ciceronis;
forgetting that at the outset these worthies had the leisure to acquire, and the ample means to pay for the best education that the world could afford. The aspirant for forensic fame who can not do this is dreadfully overweighted for the race, and can scarcely hope to come in a winner; for the want of all facilities of tuition and of one's own library, which is a thing of great cost, must be severely felt, and the necessity of working in some extraneous occupation for his daily bread must engross much of that time which should be devoted to study, and the furtherance otherwise of the cardinal object he has in view. We have read of many cases in which men have struggled triumphantly against all such obstacles, and no doubt some there were—but for the most part, as in Lord Eldon's instance, they were grossly exaggerated. Next, of those who have no patrimony or private allowance from friends, the press, in its various departments, supports a very large number. Some are editors or contributors to magazines or reviews—daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly; some are parliamentary reporters; some shorthand writers; some reporters of the proceedings in the courts of law for the daily journals and the now almost innumerous legal publications, from the recognized reports down to the two-penny pamphlet; then some are secretaries to public boards or bodies, some to private individuals. All these are comparatively well off in the world, and may "bide their time," though that time very rarely comes in any prolific shape, and meanwhile devote their tempora subseciva to the profession without the physical necessity of doing any thing ungentlemanly. But there are hundreds of others hanging on to the profession in a most precarious position from day to day, who would do any thing for business, and who taint the whole mass with the disgrace of their proceedings. These are the persons who resort to the arts of the lowest tradesmen, such as under-working, touting for employment, sneaking, cringing, lying, and the like. These are the persons who, in such shabby or fraudulent cases as may succeed, share the fees with low attorneys, and who sign habitually, for the same pettifogging practitioners, half-guinea motions in the batch, for half-a-crown or eighteenpence apiece; and, in short, do any thing and every thing that is mean and infamous. Alas for the dignity of the bar! The common mechanic, who earns his regular thirty shillings a week, the scene-shifter, the paltry play actor, enjoys more of the comforts and real respectability of human life than one of those miserable aspirants to the wool-sack, who spends his day in the desperate quest for a brief, and sits at night in his garret shivering over a shovel-full of coals and an old edition of Coke upon Littleton.—Frazer's Magazine.