teen of them before he was slain. Of this number was Milo, who, when he stood upright, could not be forced out of his place. Pliny also tells us of one Athanatus, who walked across the stage at Rome, loaded with a breastplate weighing five hundred pounds, and buskins of the same weight. But of all the prodigies of strength, of whom we have any accounts in Roman history, Maximin, the emperor, is to be reckoned the foremost. Whatever we are told relative to him is well attested; his character was too exalted not to be throughly known: and that very strength, for which he was celebrated, at last procured him no less a reward than the empire of the world. Maximin was above nine feet in height, and the best proportioned man in the whole empire. He was by birth a Thracian; and, from being a simple herdsman, rose through the gradations of office, until he came to be emperor of Rome. The first opportunity he had of exerting his strength, was in the presence of all the citizens, in the

ant of his own powers: he is ignorant how much | was the Roman tribune, who went by the name he loses by effeminacy; and what might be ac- of the second Achilles; who, with his own hand, quired by habit and exercise. Here and there, is said to have killed, at different times, three indeed, men are found among us of extraordinary hundred of the enemy; and when treacherously strength; but that strength, for want of oppor- set upon, by twenty-five of his own countrymen, tunity, is seldom called into exertion. "Among | although then past his sixtieth year, killed fourthe ancients it was a quality of much greater use than at present; as in war the same man that had strength sufficient to carry the heaviest armour, had strength sufficient also to strike the most fatal blow. In this case, his strength was at once his protection and his power. We ought not to be surprised, therefore, when we hear of one man terrible to an army, and irresistible in his career, as we find some generals represented in ancient history. But we may be very certain that this prowess was exaggerated by flattery, and exalted by terror. An age of ignorance is ever an age of wonder. At such times, mankind, having no just ideas of the human powers, are willing rather to represent what they wish, than what they know; and exalt human strength, to fill up the whole sphere of their limited conceptions. Great strength is an accidental thing; two or three in a country may possess it; and these may have a claim to heroism. But what may lead us to doubt of the veracity of these accounts is, that the heroes of antiquity are re-theatre, where he overthrew twelve of the strongpresented as the sons of heroes; their amazing strength is delivered down from father to son; and this we know to be contrary to the course of nature. Strength is not hereditary, although titles are: and I am very much induced to believe, that this great tribe of heroes, who are all represented as the descendants of heroes, are more obliged to their titles than to their strength, for their characters. With regard to the shining characters in Homer, they are all represented as princes, and as the sons of princes; while we are told of scarce any share of prowess in the meaner men of the army; who are only brought into the field for these to protect, or to slaughter. But nothing can be more unlikely than that those men, who were bred in the luxury of courts, should be strong; while the whole body of the people, who received a plainer and simpler education, should be comparatively weak. Nothing can be more contrary to the general laws of nature, than that all the sons of heroes should thus inherit not only the kingdoms, but the strength of their forefathers; and we may conclude, that they owe the greatest share of their imputed strength rather to the dignity of their stations than the force of their arms; and, like all fortunate princes, their flatterers happened to be believed. In later ages, indeed, we have some accounts of amazing strength, which we can have no reason to doubt of. But in these, nature is found to pursue her ordinary course; and we find their strength accidental. We find these strong men among the lowest of the people, and gradually rising into notice, as this superiority had more opportunity of being seen. Of this number

est men in wrestling, and outstript two of the fleetest horses in running, all in one day. He could draw a chariot loaden, that two strong horses could not move; he could break a horse's jaw with a blow of his fist, and its thigh with a kick. In war he was always foremost and invincible: happy had it been for him and his subjects if, from being formidable to his enemies, he had not become still more so to his subjects; he reigned, for some time, with all the world his enemy; all mankind wishing him dead, yet none daring to strike the blow. As if fortune had resolved that through life he should continue unconquerable, he was killed at last by his own soldiers while he was sleeping. We have many other instances, in later ages, of very great strength, and not fewer of amazing swiftness; but these, merely corporeal perfections, are now considered as of small advantage, either in war or in peace. The invention of gunpowder has, in some measure, levelled all force to one standard: and has wrought a total change in martial education through all parts of the world. In peace also the invention of new machines every day, and the application of the strength of the lower animals to the purposes of life, have rendered human strength less valuable. The boast of corporeal force is, therefore, consigned to savage nations, where those arts not being introduced, it may still be needful; but in more polite countries, few will be proud of that strength which other animals can be taught to exert to as useful purposes as they.

"If we compare the largeness and thickness of our muscles with those of any other animal, we

together, to subsist upon a single meal; and some perspiration. Were not men stimulated by such of the butterfly kinds live upon little or nothing. a pressing monitor, they might be apt to pursue But it is very different with man: his wants other amusements, with a perseverance beyond daily make their importunate demands; and it the power; and forget the useful hours of refreshis known that he cannot continue to live many ment, in those more tempting ones of pleasure. days without eating, drinking, and sleeping. But hunger makes a demand that will not be refused; and, indeed, the generality of mankind seldom await the call.

Hunger has been supposed by some to arise from the rubbing of the coats of the stomach against each other, without having any intervening substance to prevent their painful attrition Others have imagined that its juices wanting their necessary supply, turn acrid, or, as some say, pungent; and thus fret its internal coats, so as to produce a train of the most uneasy sensations. Boerhaave, who established his reputation in physic, by uniting the conjectures of all those that preceded him, ascribes hunger to the united effect of both these causes; and asserts, that the pungency of the gastric juices, and the attrition of its coats against each other, cause those pains, which nothing but food can remove.1 These juices continuing still to be separated in the stomach, and every moment becoming more acrid, mix with the blood, and infect the circulation : the circulation being thus contaminated, becomes weaker, and more contracted; and the whole nervous frame sympathizing, a hectic fever, and sometimes madness, is produced; in which state the faint wretch expires. In this manner, the man who dies of hunger may be said to be poisoned by the juices of his own body; and is de

Hunger is a much more powerful enemy to man than watchfulness, and kills him much sooner. It may be considered as a disorder that food removes; and that would quickly be fatal, without its proper antidote. In fact, it is so terrible to man, that to avoid it he even encounters certain death; and, rather than endure its tortures, he exchanges them for immediate destruction. How ever, by what I have been told, it is much more dreadful in its approaches, than in its continuance; and the pains of a famishing wretch decrease, as his strength diminishes. In the beginning the desire of food is dreadful indeed, as we know by experience, for there are few who have not, in some degree, felt its approaches. But, after the first or second day, its tortures become less terrible, and a total insensibility at length comes kindly in to the poor wretch's assistance. I have talked with the captain of a ship, who was one of six that endured it in its extremities; and who was the only person that had not lost his senses, when they received accidental relief. He assured me, his pains at first were so great, as to be often tempted to eat a part of one of the men who died; and which the rest of his crew actually for some time lived upon he said that during the continuance of this paroxysm, he found his pains insupportable; and was desir-stroyed less by the want of nourishment, than by ous, at one time, of anticipating that death which he thought inevitable: but his pains, he said, gradually decreased, after the sixth day, (for they had water in the ship, which kept them alive so long,) and then he was in a state rather of languor than desire; nor did he much wish for food, except when he saw others eating; and that for a while revived his appetite, though with diminished importunity. The latter part of the time, when his health was almost destroyed, a thousand strange images rose upon his mind; and every one of his senses began to bring him wrong information. The most fragrant perfumes appeared to him to have a foetid smell; and every thing he looked at took a greenish hue, and sometimes a yellow. When he was presented with food by the ship's company that took him and his men up, four of whom died shortly after, he could not help looking upon it with loathing instead of desire; and it was not till after four days, that his stomach was brought to its natural tone, when the violence of his appetite returned, with a sort of canine eagerness.

Thus dreadful are the effects of hunger; and yet when we come to assign the cause that produces them, we find the subject involved in doubt and intricacy. This longing eagerness is, no doubt, given for a very obvious purpose; that of replenishing the body, wasted by fatigue and

the vitiated qualities of that which he had already taken.

However this may be, we have but few instances of men dying, except at sea, of absolute hunger. The decline of those unhappy creatures who are destitute of food, at land, being more slow and unperceived. These, from often being in need, and as often receiving accidental supply, pass their lives between surfeiting and repining; and their constitution is impaired by insensible degrees. Man is unfit for a state of precarious expectation. That share of provident precaution which incites him to lay up stores for a distant

1 The proximate cause of hunger has by some-as stated in the text-been conceived to depend on the friction of the nervous papilla of the empty stomach on each other; by others, it has been imputed to the irritation produced on its parietes by the accumulation of the gastric juice. It has been thought to depend on the lassitude attending the permanent contraction of the muscular fibres of the stomach; and on the compression and creasing of the nerves, during that permanent constriction; on the dragging down of the diaphragm by the liver and spleen, when the stomach and intestines being empty, cease to support those viscera: a dragging which is the greater, as a new mode of circulation takes place in the viscera, which are supplied with blood by the cæliac artery, and while the stomach receives less blood, the spleen and the liver increase in weight and size, because their supply is increased, Richeraud.

day, becomes his torment, when totally unpro- that if the utmost benefit to the individual, and vided against an immediate call. The lower the most extensive advantage to society, serve race of animals, when satisfied, for the instant to mark any institution as of Heaven, this of moment, are perfectly happy: but it is otherwise abstinence may be reckoned among the foremost. with man; his mind anticipates distress, and Were we to give an history of the various feels the pangs of want even before it arrests benefits that have arisen from this command, him. Thus the mind, being continually harassed and how conducive it has been to long life, the by the situation, it at length influences the con- instances would fatigue with their multiplicity. stitution, and unfits it for all its functions. Some It is surprising to what a great age the primitive cruel disorder, but no way like hunger, seizes the Christians of the East, who retired from persecuunhappy sufferer; so that almost all those mention in the deserts of Arabia, continued to live, in who have thus long lived by chance, and whose every day may be considered as a happy escape from famine, are known at last to die in reality of a disorder caused by hunger; but which, in the common language, is often called a broken heart. Some of these I have known myself, when very little able to relieve them: and I have been told by a very active and worthy magistrate, that the number of such as die in London for want, is much greater than one would imagine—I think | he talked of two thousand in a year!

all the bloom of health, and yet all the rigours of abstemious discipline. Their common allowance, as we are told, for four and twenty hours, was twelve ounces of bread, and nothing but water. On this simple beverage, St. Anthony is said to have lived a hundred and five years: James, the hermit, a hundred and four; Arsenius, tutor to the emperor Arcadius, a hundred and twenty; St. Epiphanius, a hundred and fifteen; Simeon, a hundred and twelve; and Rombald, a hundred and twenty. In this manner did these holy temperate men live to an extreme old age, kept cheerful by strong hopes, and healthful by mode

Abstinence, which is thus voluntary, may be much more easily supported than constrained hunger. Man is said to live without food for seven days; which is the usual limit assigned him; and perhaps, in a state of constraint, this is the longest time he can survive the want of it. But in cases of voluntary abstinence, of sickness, or sleeping, he has been known to live much longer.

In the records of the Tower, there is an account of a Scotchman imprisoned for felony, who for the space of six weeks took not the least sustenance, being exactly watched during the whole time; and for this he received the king's pardon.2

But how numerous soever those who die of hunger may be, many times greater, on the other hand, are the number of those who die by reple-rate labour. tion. It is not the province of the present page to speculate, with the physician, upon the danger of surfeits; or, with the moralist, upon the nauseousness of gluttony: it will only be proper to observe, that as nothing is so prejudicial to health as hunger by constraint, so nothing is more beneficial to the constitution than voluntary abstinence. It was not without reason that religion enjoined this duty; since it answered the double purpose of restoring the health oppressed by luxury, and diminished the consumption of provisions, so that a part might come to the poor. It should be the business of the legislature, therefore, to enforce this divine precept; and thus, by restraining one part of mankind in the use of the superfluities, to consult for the benefit of those who want the necessaries of life. The injunctions for abstinence are strict over the whole Continent; and were rigorously observed even among ourselves, for a long time after the Reformation. Queen Elizabeth, by giving her commands upon this head the air of a political injunction, lessened, in a great measure, and in my opinion very unwisely, the religious force of the obligation. She enjoined that her subjects should fast from flesh on Fridays and Saturdays; but at the same time declared, that this was not commanded from motives of religion, as if there were any differences in meats, but merely to favour the consumption of fish, and thus to multiply the number of mariners; and also to spare the stock of sheep, which might be more beneficial in another way. In this manner the injunction defeated its own force; and this most salutary law became no longer binding, when it was supposed to come purely from man. How far it may be enjoined in the Scripture, I will not take upon me to say; but this may be asserted,

When the American Indians undertake long journeys, and when, consequently, a stock of provisions sufficient to support them the whole way, would be more than they could carry; in order to obviate this inconvenience, instead of carrying the necessary quantity, they contrive a method of palliating their hunger, by swallowing pills, made of calcined shells and tobacco. These pills take away all appetite, by producing a temporary disorder in the stomach; and, no doubt, the frequent repetition of this wretched expedient must at last be fatal. By these means, however, they continue several days without eating, cheerfully bearing such extremes of fatigue and watching

2 It is a pity Goldsmith was not more explicit on this extraordinary and incredible case. We do not recollect of ever having seen it adverted to elseillustration of the old English creed regarding the where, and we are inclined to suppose it a gratuitous hunger-enduring capabilities of the Scotch. It is not to be denied, however, that many wonderful instances of abstinence from food for months, and even years, are on record, but these were always occasioned or accompanied by fever torpor, or other diseased states of body.-ED.

as would quickly destroy men bred up in a greater! state of delicacy. For those arts by which we learn to obviate our necessities, do not fail to unfit us for their accidental encounter.

But man is more feeble; he requires its due return; and if it fails to pay the accustomed visit, his whole frame is in a short time thrown into disorder his appetite ceases; his spirits are deUpon the whole, therefore, man is less able to jected; his pulse becomes quicker and harder; support hunger than any other animal; and he and his mind, abridged of its slumbering visions, is not better qualified to support a state of watch- begins to adopt waking dreams. A thousand fulness. Indeed, sleep seems much more neces- strange phantoms arise, which come and go withsary to him than to any other creature: as, out his will: these, which are transient in the when awake, he may be said to exhaust a greater beginning, at last take firm possession of the mind, proportion of the nervous fluid; and, consequent- which yields to their dominion, and after a long ly, to stand in need of an adequate supply. Other struggle, runs into confirmed madness. In that animals, when most awake, are but little removed horrid state, the mind may be considered as a from a state of slumber; their feeble faculties, city without walls, open to every insult, and payimprisoned in matter, and rather exerted by im- ing homage to every invader; every idea that pulse than deliberation, require sleep, rather as then starts with any force, becomes a reality; a cessation from motion than from thinking. and the reason, over-fatigued with its former imBut it is otherwise with man; his ideas, fatigued portunities, makes no head against the tyrannical with their various excursions, demand a cessa-invasion, but submits to it from mere imbecility. tion, not less than the body, from toil: and he is the only creature that seems to require sleep from double motives; not less for the refreshment of the mental than of the bodily frame.

There are some lower animals, indeed, that seem to spend the greatest part of their lives in sleep; but properly speaking, the sleep of such may be considered as a kind of death; and their waking, a resurrection. Flies and insects are said to be asleep, at a time that all the vital motions have ceased, without respiration, without any circulation of their juices; if cut in pieces, they do not awake, nor does any fluid ooze out at the wound. These may be considered rather as congealed than as sleeping animals; and their rest, during winter, rather as a cessation from life than a necessary refreshment; but in the higher races of animals, whose blood is not thus congealed, and thawed by heat, these all bear the want of sleep much better than man; and some of them continue a long time without seeming to take any refreshment from it whatsoever."

3 Most animals sleep more than man; some indeed for months-as the hibernating tribes of bats, dormice, marmots, and bears. Cats and dogs would seem to have the faculty at will, as have some idiots and persons of a low order of intellect. The ideas, or impressions upon their minds, are so feeble, or so few, or are made at such long intervals, that succession is lost for want of continuity; hence the organ retains imperfectly, and but for an instant, the image which the external senses have presented to it; weariness supervenes; unconsciousness follows; and lastly, sleep, as a necessary consequence of inanition, is induced. It is observed, however, that monkeys do not sleep so much as other animals. Whence is this apparent deviation from the ordinary law of nature affecting animals? Is a monkey a reasoning animal? Observe a dog chained; he twists his chain, shortens it, and cuts himself off from his platter. Does he seek to untwist it to restore the links to their wonted extension? No; he continues tugging and howling, till some friendly hand frees him from his toils, and restores him to his former range. But how is it with the monkey under similar difficulties? Why, he deliberately untwists the chain which he cannot sunder, and hence evinces something like reaIs the sleeplessness of monkeys, then, a proof

son.

But it is happy for mankind, that this state of inquietude is seldom driven to an extreme; and that there are medicines which seldom fail to give relief. However, man finds it more difficult than any other animal to procure sleep: and some are obliged to court its approaches for several hours together, before they incline to rest. It is in vain that all light is excluded; that all sounds are removed; that warmth and softness conspire to invite it; the restless and busy mind still retains its former activity; and Reason, that wishes to lay down the reins, in spite of herself is obliged to maintain them. In this disagreeable state, the mind passes from thought to thought, willing to lose the distinctness of perception, by increasing the multitude of the images. At last, when the approaches of sleep are near, every object of the imagination begins to mix with that next it; their outlines become, in a manner, rounder; a part of their distinctions fades away; and sleep, that ensues, fashions out a dream from the remainder.

If then it should be asked, from what cause this state of repose proceeds, or in what manner sleep thus binds us for several hours together? I must fairly confess my ignorance; although it is easy to tell what philosophers say upon the subject. Sleep, says one of them,* consists in a scarcity of spirits, by which the orifices or pores of the nerves in the brain, through which the spirits

of reason? We think so. But infants, they are frequently sleepless? Yes; but never in a state of health. Restlessness in them is always an indication of hunger or a symptom of disease. The absence of sleep cannot be long sustained. Daniens slept on the rack; Luke in his iron crown; and a batallion of infantry have been known to slumber during a march! Muleteers frequently sleep on their mules, post-boys on their horses, and seamen "on the high and giddy mast." "Massa call you," said a Negro to his comrade who had fallen asleep near him; Sleep has no massa," replied the wearied boy; and he was right. We may bear the privation of fire, food, and even drink, longer than we can the want of sleep.-Binns' Anatomy of Sleep.

4 Rohault.