ought to practise it for themselves and others. With regard to exercise, judge between the two following extremes: A fox-hunter can get drunk every night in the year, and yet live to an old age; but then he is all exercise, and no thought. A sedentary scholar shall not be able to get drunk once in a year with impunity; but then he is all thought, and no exercise. Now the great object is neither to get drunk, nor to be all exercise, nor to be all thought; but to enjoy all our pleasures with a sprightly reason. The four ordinary secrets of health are, early rising, exercise, personal cleanliness, and the rising from table with a stomach unoppressed. There may be sorrows in spite of these; but they will be less with them; and nobody can be truly comfortable without. There is a great rascal going about town (a traveller to boot in foreign countries, particularly in the East and in the South) who does a world of mischief, under the guise of helping you to a digestion. I am loath to mention him. His very name is beneath the dignity and grace of my Platonic philosophy. But I must. He talks much about the liver. Sometimes he calls himself the Blue Pill, sometimes one thing, sometimes another. He is particularly fond of being denominated "the most innocent thing in the world." Let the sufferer beware of him. He may turn his company to advantage a few times, provided, and only provided, he does not anticipate. his acquaintance, or let him divert him from his better remedies. Wherever he threatens to become a habit, let the patient take to his heels. Nothing but exercise can save him. He is only surfeit in disguise; a perpetual tempter to repletion, under the guise of preventing the consequences. The excess is tempted, and the consequences are not prevented; for, at the least, one ill is planted in the constitution instead of another. Disguise the scoundrel as we may, he is only, in a small shape, what an emetic was to Vitellius, or a bath of mud to the drunken barbarian.* Sometimes, with an unblushing foresight and intention, he is even taken before dinner! Imagination escapes from the thought of an abuse so gross. I dart, upon the wings of my Wishing-Cap, out doors, and hail, as I go, those light bodies and animating looks, which are the happy results of Exercise. No. X. THE VALLEY OF LADIES. Poichè noi fummo qui, à io desiderato di menarvi in parte assai vicina di questo luogo, dove is non credo che moi alcuna fosse di voi; e chiamavisi la Valle delle Donne. - DECAMERON. Since we have been here, I have longed to take you into a spot close by, where none of you, I think, have ever been. It is called the Valley of Ladies. S the spring advanced here in Tuscany, and the leaves all came out, and the vines rose like magic, and day after day the green below was contrasted with a blue southern sky overhead, I began, modestly speaking, to be reconciled to the beauties of Italy. I was wrong when I said there were no trees *One of the O'Neales used to inflame himself with drinking, and then stand up to the neck in a bath of mud to cool. in this neighborhood except olives. We have a few poplars, oaks, and young chestnuts, &c., which make. an agreeable variety. They incrust the lanes with a decent quantity of hedge and bower. But the vines make an astonishing difference. In the winter you see nothing of thousands of them; in the spring out they come, from a bit of a trunk, like so much fairywork, and grow with a marvellous rapidity. In a few weeks they are up round their standards, and climbing their trees; doubling, as it were, at one blow, the whole prospect of green. Add to this the noble growth of the corn, and the exuberance of everything wild about the hedges, and spring is tenfold spring here to what it is in the north. The contrast is more striking, because there is no green in winter except dark firs and cypresses and the hazylooking olive. The beautiful grass, which remains all the year round in England, gives a sort of perpetual summer to the earth, whatever may be the case with the sky; but the sky in Italy during winter, though it has glorious intervals of blue and warmth, is inclement enough to make the inhabitants chatter with cold, and there is no verdure on the ground. All this being the case, the very green of the vines had in it something of England; and as the ground is no sooner dry here than it is very dry, I put vigor in my steps, and my Orlando Innamorato in my pocket, and did my best to fancy myself at once abroad and at home in the sunny-bowered Valley of Ladies. The Valley of Ladies is a spot celebrated in the sixth and seventh books of the Decameron. It lies at the foot of one of the Fiesolan hills, about two miles from Florence, commencing at the path leading up to Maiano, and terminating under the Convent of the Doccia. Doccia signifies a water-spout, a name with which the convent was christened by a little stream, the Affrico, which leaps out beneath it and waters the valley. This stream, and another called the Mensola, which runs through a neighboring valley, are the metamorphosed hero and heroine of a poem of Boccaccio's, called the Nimphale of the Fiesole. Upon the Mensola, about half a mile from the Valley of Ladies, is the Villa Gherardi, in which Boccaccio laid the scene of his four first days; and upon the Mugnone, about a mile on the other side of the valley, is the Villa Palmieri, to which his company retired for the remainder of their time, on account of the influence of neighbors. Not far from the villa a house is shown, which is said to have belonged to Dante. Milton and Galileo give a glory to Fiesole beyond even its starry antiquity; nor, perhaps, is there a name eminent in the best annals of Florence to which some connections cannot be traced with this favorite spot. When it was full of wood it must have been eminently beautiful. It is at present, indeed, full of vines and olives, but this is not wood woody, not arboraceous, and properly sylvan. A few poplars and forest trees mark out the course of the Affrico, and the convent ground contrived to retain a good slice of evergreens, which make a handsome contrast on the hillside with its white cloister. But agriculture, quarries, and wood fires have destroyed the rest. Nevertheless, I now found the whole valley beautiful. It is sprinkled with white cottages; the cornfields pre in this neighborhood except olives. We have a few poplars, oaks, and young chestnuts, &c., which make an agreeable variety. They incrust the lanes with a decent quantity of hedge and bower. But the vines make an astonishing difference. In the winter you see nothing of thousands of them; in the spring out they come, from a bit of a trunk, like so much fairywork, and grow with a marvellous rapidity. In a few weeks they are up round their standards, and climbing their trees; doubling, as it were, at one blow, the whole prospect of green. Add to this the noble growth of the corn, and the exuberance of everything wild about the hedges, and spring is tenfold spring here to what it is in the north. The contrast is more striking, because there is no green in winter except dark firs and cypresses and the hazylooking olive. The beautiful grass, which remains all the year round in England, gives a sort of perpetual summer to the earth, whatever may be the case with the sky; but the sky in Italy during winter, though it has glorious intervals of blue and warmth, is inclement enough to make the inhabitants chatter with cold, and there is no verdure on the ground. All this being the case, the very green of the vines had in it something of England; and as the ground is no sooner dry here than it is very dry, I put vigor in my steps, and my Orlando Innamorato in my pocket, and did my best to fancy myself at once abroad and at home in the sunny-bowered Valley of Ladies. The Valley of Ladies is a spot celebrated in the let tind seventh books of the Decameron. It lies at cise canf one of the Fiesolan hills, about two miles |