EARLY RISING.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 290, 8 December 1871, Page 4

EARLY RISING.

{From ihe Spectator.) The Lancet says early rising is healthy, but the only evidence it produces is that London life, with its late hours, hot rooms. and incessant fatigues, is very unhealthy for young women, which is truf, bat no proof thar, granted the same deficiency of rest, the morning air would revive them. As a matter of fact, Orientals who get up early are not nearly as healthy as Westerns who get, up late, and do not live nearly as long. Where is tha proof that the agricultural classes it. England, who universally rise early because they cannot have J artificial light, are healthier than the centlemen who universally rise late ? They are stronger, no doubt, more especially tbe women ; but that is the result of regular work, not of early rising. A milkmaid gets just as ill as a rector's daughter. A man who gets up early and takes a walk, when otherwise he would have sat all day, may benefit by the exercise; but tbe walk would do him just as much good, except iv July or August, atany other time of the day. There is possibly one bodily gain in the practice, a slight relief to the eyes, which crow weary with so much work under artificial light ; but we are not quite sure even of thar, believing that, though short sight is less common among agricultural laborers than among members of Parliament, bleared eyes and eye diseases are at least as frequent. Iv the native land of ophthalmia, the fellahs set ud at four, and English actors are not at all remarkable for weak eyes. There are quite as many hale octogenarians among the cultivated men of Western cities who get up at nine or later, as among ploughmen, and a good many more with their faculties unimparied. Nor, as Dickens once put it, is it clear that sweeps are healthy, rich, or specially gifted with intellectual power. The truth is that late rising in civilized countries is not the result either of idleness of fashion, or hygienic laws, but of habit based partly upon convenience, and partly upon the social system of division of labor. It is very inconvenient for any society, which is in any way interdependent to vary its time of rising with the sun, and it therefore selects a' rough mean time at which for the greater part of the year there will be a decent measure of daylight! In England that time is not. five or anything like five, but between eight and nine; and, accordingly, tbe majority of people who can do as they like select a time for rising, and so enable themselves to act with something like concert. They can all go to business at once, instead of wasting hours in waiting for each other, and all finish at once instead of burdening the whole class of assistants, clerks, &c. with different and variable hours. Moreover, they can ill go comfortably to work, that is," can economise their strength to the utmost, acute discomfort unnecessarily incurred involving loss of mental power. In England, for eight months in the year, early hours involve discomfort great enough to be positively injurious — if not to health, at all events to mental serenity. Chill is not healthy, and our early hours in this climate are chilly and damp, unmitigated by fire, and uusoothed by food and coffee, none of these alleviations being procurable except at the cost of diminished sleep for the whole caste of servants, who, as it is, need somewhat more time for rest than their masters, and obtain somewhat less. ♦This might be corrected, no doubt, by everybody retiring much earlier to bed ; but the only effect of tbat change would

be to shorten tbe lime tor rest and re- \, creation, whioh ie much mo short already./ Iv ihe fierce competition of civilise.! life/j men would work twenty-four hours ir' ! they could, and would assuredly work ; through tlie whole of tlie additional daylight secured b}* their change of habit. ■ Under- ihe existing system, the profits- * sional classes oan, if they like, wark j steadily eight hours a Jay under the \ circmnstauees best calculated to econoti ise I effotf, ami yet retaiu eight hours for fend, society, and readin_r. and eight; hours for sleep. The workiug classes with their sure instincts for their own interest are trying to secure just those very eonditi ins. and wil! in the end secure them. Of course, they will have to be paid for, >ut, in spite of Franklin's -.ratid nonsense ! .•.ho ut the cost of candles, the price in a j Western climate and in cities which use j gas is no* very heavy, probably not ejual j to the value of one hour a week of any ', artizan's work — a course which woul Ihe j more than repaid by increased freshness, j strength, and willingness for toil. ; If, then, there is no argument for early \ rising in a climate tike our*, how Jo we j account for the prevalence of a belief lo its I virtues, a prevalence so widely sjiread, \ that his accidental habit oi getting up be- \ times has made the Kmperor of Brazil quite popular amotiii a people whocerkaii.lv wiil not imitate him, ? Wei s, thfj men who made our proverbs were most oj them j country folk, and, as country lajlmrers roust he early tv save light, country mas- ; ters inventeil oar partieahr apophthegm j about early rising for the benefit jof the ; class which of all others has least! health — vide the returns of any parish dispensary — wealth, or wisdom. Lying proverbs intended to console men under discomfort incurred for the benefit of other j people are common enough in all countries, and i j that is one of them. Then Solomon j approved early rising, and the/ British public, though it studies and roWreuees his sayings, having an instinctive respect for his bunreois and slightly cruvl genius — we wonder how many British children have been tortured because ISolomou whipped Rehoboam into tyranny i — itevpr will remember that the great J? hew*, dwelt in a climate where work can be Vest Accomplished before the sun's rays are Vertical, in a land where the shadow of a great rock is not chilling hut refreshing;. And then, finally, the discipline of the ntfrsV^v requires the superstition. Children fatten on sleep, and as they will not sleep in the daylight, they must be sent, to bed early, and as ihey hate going to bed early, a theory has to he invented for their consolation which influences thetn long after they have discovered that, man in our time does not live in a state of nature; that getting ap with the sun and going to bed with the falling night involves a huge waste of life; that man's brain was (riven him to supplement Nature, not, to obey her slavishly; and tbat, on the whole, in a world such as they live in, the way to he "healthy, wealthy, and wise," is to get up at eight, work through daylight, study, eat, and play till midnight, and sleep through the small, uncomfortable, chilly, nerve-consuming hours supposed to begin the day. That may not be the distribution of time which produces milkmaids, though we should like to fight that out; but milkmaids do not inveut telegraphs, apply spectral analysis, or govern the world.