a corner of my room, and pleases me the more because it does every thing
I require of it in the most profound silence. My landlady and her
daughters are so well acquainted with my hours of exercise, that they
never come into my room to disturb me whilst I am ringing.

When I was some years younger than I am at present, I used to employ
myself in a more laborious diversion, which I learned from a Latin
treatise of exercises that is written with great erudition: It is there
called the skiomachia, or the fighting with a man's own shadow, and
consists in the brandishing of two short sticks grasped in each hand,
and loaden with plugs of lead at either end. This opens the chest,
exercises the limbs, and gives a man all the pleasure of boxing, without
the blows. I could wish that several learned men would lay out that time
which they employ in controversies and disputes about nothing, in this
method of fighting with their own shadows. It might conduce very much to
evaporate the spleen, which makes them uneasy to the public as well as
to themselves.

To conclude, as I am a compound of soul and body, I consider myself as
obliged to a double scheme of duties; and think I have not fulfilled the
business of the day when I do not thus employ the one in labour and
exercise, as well as the other in study and contemplation. L.




No. 116. FRIDAY, JULY 13.

_Vocat ingenti clamore Cithaeron,
Taygetique canes._