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215. Education-compared to Sculpture

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211. Transmigration of Souls-Letters on Simo-
nides' Satire on Women

212. Letter from a Hen-peckt Husband deter-

mined to be free

213. On habitual good intentions

214. On Patrons and their Clients

216. Success of the Hen-peckt Husband determi-
ned to be free

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217. Club of She-Romps-Letters on Indelicacy

--from an old Maid-a Bee

218. Fame-Reputation-Credit

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219. Quality-Vanity of Honours and Titles

220. Rejection of an aged Lover

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False Wit and Mechanic Poetry

Love-Salutations

221. Use of Mottos-Love of Latin among the
Common People-Signature Letters

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222. Inconsistencies of Men of Talents with res-

pect to Economy

HUGHES.

ADDISON.

STEELE.

ADDISON.

STEELE.

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STEELE.

BUDGELL.

STEELE.

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ADDISON.

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224. Universality of Ambition-its wrong Direc-

225. Discretion and Cunning

HUGHES

ADDISON.

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THE

SPECTATOR.

No. 195. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1711.

Νήπιοι εδ ̓ ἴσασιν όσῳ πλέον ήμισυ παντός.
Οὐδ ̓ ὅσον ἐν μαλάχη τε δὲ ἀσφοδέλω μέγ' όνειαρ.
HES. Oper. & Dier. 1. i. 40.

Fools not to know that half exceeds the whole,
How blest the sparing meal and temperate bowl.

THERE is a story in the Arabian Nights Tales of a king who had long languished under an ill habit of body, and had taken abundance of remedies to no purpose. At length, says the fable, a physician cured him by the following method: He took a hollow ball of wood, and filled it with several drugs; after which he closed it up so artificially that nothing appeared. He likewise took a mall, and after having hollowed the handle, and that part which strikes the ball, he enclosed in them several drugs after the same manner as in the ball itself. He then ordered the sultan, who was his patient, to exercise himself early in the morning with these rightly prepared instruments, till such time as he should sweat: when, as the story goes, the virtue of the medicaments perspi

ring through the wood had so good an influence on the sultan's constitution, that they cured him of an indisposition which all the compositions he had taken inwardly had not been able to remove. This eastern allegory is finely contrived to shew us how beneficial bodily labour is to health, and that exercise is the most effectual physic. I have described in my hundred and fifteenth paper, from the general structure and mechanism of an human body, how absolutely necessary exercise is for its preservation. I shall in this place recommend another great preservative of health, which in many cases produces the same effects as exercise, and may, in some measure, supply its place, where opportunities of exercise are wanting. The preservative I am speaking of is temperance, which has those particular advantages above all other means of health, that it may be practised by all ranks and conditions, at any season, or in any place. It is a kind of regimen into which every man may put himself, without interruption to business, expense of money, or loss of time. If exercise throws off all superfluities, temperance prevents them; if exercise clears the vessels, temperance neither satiates nor overstrains them; if exercise raises proper ferments in the humours, and promotes the circulation of the blood, temperance gives nature her full play, and enables her to exert herself in all her force and vigour; if exercise dissipates a growing distemper, temperance starves it.

Physic, for the most part, is nothing else but the substitute of exercise or temperance. Medicines are indeed absolutely necessary in acute distempers, that cannot wait the slow operations. of these two great instruments of health; but did men live in an habitual course of exercise and

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