they had before the cultivation of their imagination was given up. They
do not, in short, seem to exercise, under circumstances that cannot be
escaped, that vigilant self-control which would be the only safe test
of the conscientiousness of their intellectual sacrifice.

For you, I should consider any sacrifice of the foregoing kind
especially inexpedient. Your deep thoughtfulness of mind, and your
habitual delicacy of health, make it impossible for you to give up light
literature with any degree of safety; even were it right that you should
abandon that species of mental cultivation which is effected by this
most important branch of study. People who never read difficult books,
and who are not of reflective habits of mind, can little understand the
necessity that at times exists for entire repose to the higher powers of
the mind--a repose which can be by no means so effectually procured as
by an interesting work of fiction. A drive in a pretty country, a
friendly visit, an hour's work in the garden, any of these may indeed
effect the same purpose, and on some occasions in a safer way than a
novel or a poem. The former, however, are means which are not always
within one's reach, which are impossible at seasons when entire rest to
the mind is most required,--viz. during days and weeks of confinement to
a sick and infected room. At such periods, it is true that the more idle
the mind can be kept the better; even the most trifling story may excite
a dangerous exertion of its nervous action; at times, however, when it
is sufficiently strong and disengaged to feel a craving for active
employment, it is of great importance that the employment should be such
as would involve no exercise of the higher intellectual faculties. I
have known serious evils result to both mind and body from an imprudent
engagement in intellectual pursuits during temporary, and as it may
often appear trifling, illness. Whenever the body is weak, the mind also
should be allowed to rest, if the invalid be a person of thought and