him worse. What is it he requires? He requires to get well rid of the effete and useless atoms of his organism, which by their accumulation in his system cause his languor and listlessness. They muddle his brain, congest his liver, and pot his belly. He grows stouter and weaker, for the accumulation is of useless particles. His muscles shrink, while his cellular tissue swells with fat-globules. He becomes lethargic, plethoric, obese, and is a facile prey to all the circumambient morbific influences which are as sure to settle on such an appropriate soil as mould is to light on decaying cheese.

How is this state of things to be remedied? Clearly the indication is to eliminate the effete and useless particles, and to promote the formation of sound and useful atoms. And this is to be effected by that judicious combination of exercise and amusement which is rightly termed recreation, for by its means the body is, as it were, created afresh, the old and useless particles being expelled, and new and more vigorous ones substituted.

It is not often necessary to insist on the utility of recreation to the young. Most young men make to themselves opportunities enough of combining exercise and amusement. They are cricketers, boaters, racket-players, or members of the Alpine club, and the physician's business it is more often to restrain them from carrying their exercises to excess than to encourage them to further exertion. We have seen sad instances of heart disease brought on by excessive rowing, and in one case a premature death from following the beagles a-foot too eagerly.

But when we have passed the period of youth and have reached, say the other side of forty, few of us keep up the sports that formed the delight and the invigorators of our youth. We have our businesses and our professions to attend to, and we have too little time and too much dignity to carry on our cricket, our rowing matches, our foot races, our leaping, or other violent exercises. Moreover, these tours de force are not so suitable for the last as they are for the first half of our allotted fourscore years. We need recreation of a milder character, but we must have recreation if we would preserve our

health at the highest standard. Too many of us, when we give up the sports of our youth, pass at once into mere professional or business men, and seek no more exercise than is afforded by the daily walk to our place of business or, less than that even, a drive of so many miles contenting us. Thus we prematurely lapse into general flabbiness and old fogydom.

In this condition we are sensitive to all disease-producing agencies. A trivial error of diet gives us a month-long dyspepsia, a bilious attack, or a tedious diarrhoea; exposure to a draught or to damp lays us up with catarrh, bronchitis, pneumonia, or rheumatism; a little extra mental worry gives us a nervous or sick headache, the molehills of life become mountains, and we feel bored and fatigued by any unusual exertion of mind or body. To do away with this state of things we require recreation.

What is the kind of recreation suitable for a middle-aged man? We must have our exercise combined with amusement in the open air. In a gymnasium we may strengthen our muscles, make our joints lissom, and our sinews like whipcord, but we must begin young. A middle-aged gentleman would not derive much benefit from frequenting a confined gymnasium and endeavouring to go through the performances commonly practised in such a place. Moreover, if he is at all disposed to embonpoint, it would be hazardous for him to suspend himself head downwards or attempt the flying trapèze.

However engaged in business or professionally we may be, we can always manage to give ourselves a holiday of some weeks' duration during a certain portion of the year. This holiday we spend in a trip to some country quarter. This should be our great recreation of the year.

For a middle-aged man the finest place abroad-if go abroad we must-for recreation is Switzerland. There the hotels are comfortable exceedingly, the scenery is unequalled, and so is its accessibility. We can climb high hills by easy paths, and find excellent hotels on the top of them. We can inhale new life on lofty ridges without risk of losing our way. We can traverse snow-fields in midsummer, cool ourselves in icy grottos, see snow-peaks, glaciers, avalanches, and the

ruggedest of mountain-passes without too much fatigue, and be certain of a good dinner and a clean bed at the end of our day's exertion. Switzerland is the paradise of the middleaged tourist. A pleasant railway journey brings him into the heart of the country, and with the aid of his Murray or Bædiker he can cut out his work for himself by easy stages. Every mountain-summit, pass, glacier, waterfall, and echo, has been turned by that industrious Swiss folk to the best account. Paths are excellent, guides, mules, horses, and even carrying chairs are everywhere to be had, and the never-failing inn affords the needful rest and refreshment after a stiff day's work. For the middle-aged there are the easy ascents of Righi, Pilatus, Montavert, Scheinige Platte, Murren, and a hundred more, just a good day's work for not unexercised limbs of forty years and upwards, while for more enterprising and vigorous juveniles there are the higher peaks and snow-clad summits of all degrees of accessibility and inaccessibility. Climbing hills is one of the first of recreations, and nowhere can be found better hills to climb, or greater facilities for climbing them, than in Switzerland.

Scotland, Wales, and the Cumberland Lake district are also magnificent grounds for the climber, and these countries have no difficulties too great for the middle-aged pedestrian.

A month passed in this recreation will raise to its highest standard the health of the flabbiest denizen of a busy town, and in no way can the short holiday of a professional or mercantile man be better spent than in scaling the peaks and passes of a mountain district.

The pure air of the mountains acts as a powerful stimulant on our town-wearied nerves. We feel the unwonted healthful glow coming into our cheek as we start off to scale our Snowdon, Skiddaw, Ben Lomond, or Pilatus. The excitement of the task before us sends a thrill of health through our arteries, and we walk with an elasticity of tread that proves to us that our muscles are not so flaccid and feckless as we feared they were. As we ascend, our pulses beat in a livelier manner, at every breath we feel our lungs expanding to their minutest air-cell, we feel decidedly, yes, uncomfort

ably hot, until the perspiration bursts from us in copious and cooling streams. The towny pallor of our face gives place to a red, a purple hue; panting and perspiring and exhausted, we throw ourselves on a grassy bank or among the purple heather, and for a few seconds we can attend to nothing but the unusual beating of our heart, which seems to pulsate through all our body to the remotest extremities of our limbs. This soon subsides, and we look around us; the wonderful and unaccustomed sight of a vast tract of country, spread out like a map beneath us, the delicious breeze that fans our heated cheek, the close propinquity of the fleecy clouds, the delicate perfumes of the mountain wild flowers, the hum of the bees, the cheerful chirrup of the grasshopper and cricket, the trill of the lark below us, and the scream of the eagle circling above us, by turns or all together appeal to our different senses. Sight, hearing, smell, and feeling, are all acted on by new and powerful stimuli and quickened into new activity, while we feel that our hurried circulation and copious transudation are eliminating the effete particles from our organism by One mouthful of water from the cold crystal spring by our side, and we spring up again fresher and lighter than when we set out. In a few spurts of vigorous climbing, and as many pauses for rest, we reach the summit of the hill. We are tired, there is no denying it; but it is no disagreeable tiredness that we feel; not so tired but that we can enjoy heartily the mighty panorama around us; not too tired to feel delighted at having accomplished our task; not too tired to relish the simple meal we have brought with us, or, if in Switzerland, the more elaborate repast provided by the hotel. In a few minutes we feel no sense of fatigue, we experience nothing but pleasurable sensations from the fresh, perhaps strong, breeze that blows upon us, rapidly cools our heated bodies, and suddenly checks our profuse perspiration, yet without danger. A cloud may envelope us in its damp embrace-we rather like it; the sun may strike down on our unsheltered bodies-we care not. The excitement of the climb, the exhilaration of the novel scene, render cold winds, damp clouds, or hot sunbeams, mere wholesome stimuli to our

ounces.

renovated nervous system. We feel almost sorry we have no higher peak to climb, and almost regretfully we turn to descend the hill, which, middle-aged as we are, yet innocent of any trace of gout or rheumatism in our joints and tendons, we accomplish in a hop, a skip, and a jump, with scarce a need for a pause on the way.

A brief consideration of the mechanism of climbing will show us that it must be one of the best exercises for bringing into play the muscles of the lower limbs and back. In steep ascents we have to lift by the action of the extensor muscles of one leg the whole weight of our body-twelve stone, more or less, as the case may be a height varying from six to eighteen inches and upwards, at every step. It is the enormous effort required for the frequent repetition of this feat that produces that immense commotion in our circulation we observe after going but a short distance. When the ascent is very steep we use our arms as well as our legs. Seizing with both hands the projecting rock, and with one foot planted on a higher vantage-point while the other touches a lower level, we bring almost every muscle of our body and limbs into play at each step. The lower foot is smartly extended, and at the same moment the upper leg is vigorously brought to extension, whilst the arms are being powerfully flexed. The muscles of the trunk, back and front, are all tightened, the chest inflated, and the breath held whilst the spring is made. A few score feet of such climbing will take all the stiffness, the result of months of sedentary life, out of our ligaments and sinews, and, unless we overdo it, we only feel refreshed and invigorated by our exertion.

But the accessaries of mountain climbing assist the renovation of our frame as much as the mere muscular exertion. The healthful stimuli it affords to all our senses go a great way towards assisting in the renewal of life. The mere exercise of climbing may be had as well in the treadmill, but we never heard of any one being refreshed by that exercise. The air, the scenery, the sounds, and the odours of mountains, are mighty adjuvants to health. And yet these