All youths, but especially those who follow sedentary employments, ought to exercise with dumb-bells half-an-hour or so before going to bed, and at other times when convenient. Were this more practised, we should hear of few dying of consumption.
It is the duty of parents and guardians to endeavour, with the utmost care, to discover the capacities and fitness of youth for any business before they engage in it; for, without they are innately gifted with the power of becoming artists, the want of that power will cause the pursuit to be felt by them as up-hill work, and be productive of unhappiness to them through life. But the fondness of parents for their offspring is mostly such as to blind them in forming a judgment, and disappointment is sure to follow. It would be well for such parents to read Gay’s fable of “The Owl, the Swan, the Cock, the Spider, the Ass, and the Farmer.” It may indeed be conceded that there are some rare exceptions to this general rule; for a man may be so formed in body and mind—with such symmetry and health in the one, and such energy in the other—that he may advance a great way towards perfection in anything he ardently pursues. But an “Admirable Chrichton,” or a Sir Joshua Reynolds, does not often appear. Men so gifted by nature, whether as artists, or in any other way where intellectual powers are to be drawn forth, ought never to despair of rising to eminence, or to imagine that they can never equal such men as have excelled all others in their day. It ought to be kept in mind that the same superintending Providence which gifted those men with talents to excite wonder and to improve society from time to time, in all ages, still rules the world and the affairs of mankind, and will continue to do so for ever, as often as the services of such men are wanted; and this consideration ought to act as a stimulant to their successors, to endeavour to surpass in excellence the brilliant luminaries who have only gone before them to pave the way and to enlighten their paths. All artists—and indeed till men—ought to divide their time by regularly appropriating one portion of it to one purpose, and another part of it to the varied business that may be set apart for another. In this way a deal of work may be got through; and the artist, after leaving off his too intense application, would see, as it were, what he had been doing with _new eyes_, and would thus be enabled to criticize the almost endless variety of lights, shades, and effects, which await his pencil to produce.