and the difference is doubtless owing to our climate. In the summer it is too hot for exercise; in the winter it is too cold; in the spring, it is too variable. The autumn, indeed, is favourable; but that is too short a season to form habits which shall bear up against the adverse influences of the whole year.

What, then, is to be done? I answer that an effort must be made proportioned to the difficulties that are to be overcome. Exercise, out of doors, can be taken in our climate the year round; as there are some good examples to prove. I am told, indeed, that some improvement is already taking place in the habits of our American ladies in this respect.

And many things besides this can be done. Clothing can be better adapted to the purposes of exercise in, and defence against our climate. We want more of the foreign liberty of walking out, without being in full dress. I am sorry to observe the prejudice of fashion against the India rubber shoe-actual instrument for advancing civilization, as I consider it-promoter of societywhich stands instead of carriages, and horses, and servants, if it were but duly appreciated and used. To go back a step: our children should be brought up on plain fare in the nursery; they should be

constantly inured to the climate as they grow up; at a later period they should not be made victims to the hard studies of fashionable schools; and when they are sent into the world, they should not be sacrificed to the follies of fashionable dress and dissipation.

If there is any conscience in the country, these things must, at length, come to be regarded. The claims of the present, and of future generations; the most essential welfare of the nation, and the dearest happiness of beings unborn; the anxieties and sorrows of husbands, fathers, and friends, call upon the women of our country to regard the care of their health as an absolute duty!

CHAPTER VII.

Slough-Stoke Park The Churchyard of Gray's Elegy-Windsor Castle-Church Establishment in England-Claims of the Dissenters The Voluntary Principle-Effect of an Establishment upon the state of Religion-Ramohun Roy-Effect of an Establishment upon the Character of the Clergy-Position of the Clergy in America-Danger of subserviency to Popular Opinion General liability of the same character.

AUGUST 14. I came down to Slough to-day, and stopped for the night, that I might to-morrow visit Windsor Castle, two miles distant. In the direction opposite to the castle, and about the same distance, is Stoke Park, within the bounds of which is the church (the Stoke parish church) and the churchyard, upon which Gray is said to have composed his celebrated Elegy; and near at hand is his monument. After I had taken my tea, I determined to walk to the spot.

It was some time after sunset when I arrived there; a glow in the western sky spread a solemn hue over all objects, but scarcely penetrated the deep shadow of the groves. I could not have

chosen an hour more fit for such a visit; nor could any place be more fit for such meditations as those of Gray's Elegy. The church is one of those singular structures so common in England, which seem to consist of several buildings clustered together without any order or plan. It has a pretty spire, which rises, with picturesque effect, amid the trees that surround the place on all sides, except that of the approach. The churchyard is full of the swelling mounds, mentioned in the Elegy, and there, too, stands the "venerable yew." The monument appears in the distance, through the opening by which you approach. It is a simple, square block, with a sort of oblong urn on the top. One of the four sides bears the name, age, &c., and mentions that the poet's remains sleep in the neighbouring churchyard, in the same tomb with his mother's, and bearing no other than the affectionate inscription by which he commemorated her virtues. It was so dark when I arrived at the churchyard, that I could only read the words "careful and tender mother"-yet what a wealth of affection, what a world of solicitude and love, what a life of cares never to be repaid nor described, do those few words set forth!

It was among the last shadows of the late evening twilight that I commenced my walk homeward

-if, alas! a traveller's home can be called home at all. As I left the park, one of those contrasts presented itself which "the lights and shadows" of life are so constantly depicting upon the manycoloured web of our reflections. Windsor Castle, seen in the distance, was just then lighted up for the evening. "What care we," I said, "who built its mighty towers, compared with the interest we feel in him, who built the simple rhyme of the Elegy on this country churchyard! I had rather take my chance for fame in these few lines, which genius in its holy hour of inspiration has written, than in all that the royal masters of Windsor Castle have done, during the varied and anxious lives which have fretted themselves away, till the exclamation has arisen, as it did from the dying bed of George the Fourth, Oh God! this is death!'"

I should have mentioned that three sides of Gray's monument bear appropriate inscriptions from his own verses, two of them were from the Elegy, the other I cannot refer to.

On one side were the following stanzas :

"Beneath those rugged elms, that yew tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell, for ever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.