Ye who amid this feverish world would fear
A body free of pain, of cares a mind,
Fly the rank city, fhun its turbid air;
Breathe not the chaos of eternal smoke
And volatile corruption, from the dead,
The dying, fick'ning, and the living world
Exhal'd, to fully heaven's tranfparent dome
With dim mortality. It is not Air

That from a thousand lungs reeks back to thine,
Sated with exhalations rank and fell,
The fpoil of dunghills, and the putrid thaw
Of nature, when from fhape and texture the
Relapfes into fighting elements :

It is not Air, but floats a naufeous mafs
Of all obfcene, corrupt, offenfive things.
Much moisture hurts; but here a fordid bath,
With oily rancour fraught, relaxes more
The folid frame than fimple moisture can.
Befides, immur'd in many a fullen bay
That never felt the freshness of the breeze,
This flumbering Deep remains, and ranker grows
With fickly reft: and (tho' the lungs abhor
To drink the dun fuliginous abyfs)

Did not the acid vigour of the mine,
Roll'd from fo many thundering chimneys, tame
The putrid fteams that over-fwarm the sky,
This cauftic venom would perhaps corrode
Those tender cells that draw the vital air,
In vain with all their un&tuous rills bedew'd ;
Or by the drunken venous tubes, that yawn
In countless pores o'er all the pervious skin,
Imbib'd, would poifon the balfamic blood,
And roufe the heart to ev'ry fever's rage.
While yet you breathe, away; the rural wilds
Invite; the mountains call you, and the vales;
The woods, the freams, and each ambrofial breeze
That fans the ever-undulating sky;

A kindly fky whofe foftering pow'r regales
A 2

Man,

Man, beaff, and all the vegetable reign.
Find them fome woodland scene where Nature fmiles
Benign, where all her honeft children thrive.
To us there wants not many a happy feat;
Look round the fmiling land, fuch numbers rife
We hardly fix, bewilder'd in our choice.
See where, enthron'd in adamantine flate,
Proud of her bards, imperial Windfor fits;
There chufe thy feat, in fome afpiring grove
Faft by the flowly-winding Thames; or where
Broader the laves fair Richmond's green retreats
Richmond that fees an hundred villas rife
Rural or gay). Oh! from the fummer's rage,
Oh! wrap me in the friendly gloom that hides
Umbrageous Ham! But, if the busy Town
Attract thee ftill to toil for pow'r or gold,
Sweetly thou may'ft thy vacant hours poffefs
In Hampftead, courted by the western wind;
Or Greenwich, waving o'er the winding flood;
Or lofe the world amid the fylvan wilds
Of Dulwich, yet by barbarous arts unfpoil'd.
Green rife the Kentifh hills in cheerful air;
But on the marshy plains that Effex fpreads
Build not, nor reft too long thy wandering feet
For on a ruftic throne of dewy turf,

With baneful fogs her aching temples bound,
Quartana there prefides: a meagre fiend,
Begot by Eurus, when his brutal force
Comprefs'd the flothful Naiad of the fens,
From fuch a mixture fprung, this fitful peft
With feverish blafts fubdues the fickning land:
Cold tremors come, with mighty love of rest,
Convulfive yawnings, laffitude, and pains
That fting the burthen'd brows, fatigue the loins,
And rack the joints, and ev'ry torpid limb;
Then parching heat fucceeds, till copious fweats
O'erflow: a fhort relief from former ills.
Beneath repeated shocks the wretches pine:

The

The vigour finks; the habit melts away;
The chearful, pure, and animated bloom
Dies from the face with fqualid atrophy
Devour'd, in fallow melancholy clad.
And oft the forcerefs in her fated wrath,
Refigns them to the furies of her train ;
The bloated Hydrops, and the yellow fiend
Tinged with her own accumulated gall.

In queft of fites, avoid the mournful plain
Where ofiers thrive, and trees that love the lake;
Where many lazy muddy rivers flow:
Nor, for the wealth that all the Indies roll,
Fix near the mar fhy margin of the main.
For from the humid foil, and wat'ry reign,
Eternal vapours rife; the fpungy air
For ever weeps; or, turgid with the weight
Of waters, pours a founding deluge down.
Skies fuch as these let ev'ry mortai fhun
Who dreads the dropfy, palfy, or the gout,
Tertian, corrofive fcurvy, or moift catarrh;
Or any other injury that grows

From raw-fpun fibres idle and unftrung,
Skin ill-perfpiring, and the purple flood
In languid eddies loit'ring into phlegm.

Yet not alone from humid fkies we pine;
For air may be too dry. The fubtle heaven,
That winnows into duft the blafted downs,
Bare and extended wide without a ftream,
Too faft imbibes th'atténuated lymph,
Which, by the furface, from the blood exhales.
The lungs grow rigid, and with toil effay
Their flexible vibrations; or inflam'd,
Their tender ever-moving ftructure thaws.
Spoil'd of its limpid vehicle, the blood
A mafs of lees remains, a droffy tide
That flow as Lethe wanders thro' the veins;
Unactive in the fervices of life,"

Unfit to lead its pitchy current thro'
The fecret mazy channels of the brain.

A 3

The

The melancholy Fiend (that worst defpair
Of phyfic) hence the ruft-complexion'd man
Purfues, whofe blood is dry, whose fibres gain
Too ftretch'd a tone: and hence in climes aduf
So fudden tumults feize the trembling nerves,
And burning fevers glow with double rage.

C

Fly, if you can. thefe violent extremes
Of air; the wholesome is nor moist nor dry.
But as the pow'r of chufing is denied ›
To half mankind, a further task enfues ;
How beft to mitigate thefe fell extremes,
How breathe unhurt the withering element,
Or hazy atmosphere: tho' cuftom moulds
To ev'ry clime the foft Promothean clay;
And he who firft the fogs of Effex breath'd
(So kind is native air) may in the fens
Of Effex from inveterate ills revive
At pure Montpelier or Bermuda caught.
But, if the raw and oozy heaven offend,
Correct the foil, and dry the fources up
Of wat❜ry exhalation; wide and deep
Conduct your trenches thro' the quaking bog
Solicitous, with all your winning arts,
Betray th' unwilling lake into the ftream;
And weed the foreft, and invoke the winds
To break the toils where ftrangled vapours lie;
Or thro' the thickets fend the crackling flames.
Meantime, at home with cheerful fires difpel
The humid air: and let
your table smoke
With folid roaft or bak'd ;. or what the herds
Of tamer breed fupply; or what the wilds
Yield to the toilfome pleasures of the chace.
Generous your wine, the boast of rip'ning years,
But frugal be your cups; the languid frame,
Vapid and funk from yesterday's debauch,
Shrinks from the cold embrace of wat'ry heavens.
But neither thefe, nor all Apollo's arts,
Difarm the dangers of the dropping fky,

Unless

Unless with exercife and

manly toil

You brace your nerves, and fpur the lagging blood.
The fatt'ning clime let all the fons of cafe
Avoid; if indolence would with to live,
Go, yawn and loiter out the long flow year
In fairer fkies. If droughty regions parch
The fkin and lungs, and bake the thick'ning blood,
Deep in the waving foreft chufe your feat,
Where fuming trees refresh the thirty air;
And wake the fountains from their fecret beds,
And into lakes dilate the rapid ftream.

Here fpread your gardens wide; and let the cool,
The moift relaxing vegetable store

Prevail in each repaft: your food fupplied
By bleeding life, be gently wafted down,
By foft decoction and a mellowing heat,
To liquid balm; or, if the folid mafs
You chufe, tormented in the boiling wave;
That through the thirty channels of the blood
A fmooth diluted chyle may ever flow.
The fragrant dairy from its cold recefs
Its nectar acid or benign will pour

To drown your thirft; or let the mantling bowl
Of keen Sherbet the fickle tafte relieve.
For with the viscous blood the fimple ftream
Will hardly mingle; and fermented cups
Oft diffipate more moisture than they give.
Yet when pale feafons rife, or winter rolls
His horrors o'er the world, thou may'ft indulge
In feafts more genial, and impatient broach
The mellow całk. Then too the fcourging air
Provokes to keener toils than fultry thoughts
Allow. But rarely we fuch fkies blafpheme.
Steep'd in continual rains, or with raw fogs
Bedew'd, our feafons droop: incumbent fill
A pond'ro
'rous heaven o'erwhelms the finking foul:
Lab'ring with forms, in heavy mountains rife
Th' imbattled clouds, as if the Stygian fhades

Had