The Mirror, 1828.07.05, issue No. 321 | Page 8

actually
true to a certain extent. By early retirement to rest, the sedative effect
on the constitution, to an extent such as to disturb the functions, is
escaped.

If we connect these two influences, the annual and diurnal successions
of cold and heat, in their joint effect, we find, that about, or a little after
the summer solstice, the influence of the sun being at its maximum, the
nervous sensibility, heat, circulating excitement, and cutaneous
secretions of the body, are also at their maximum. The temperature of
the day and night differ so little, that the sedative effects of evening and
morning are not sufficient to restore the frame by soothing the
sensibilities, overexcited and irritable from the previous warmth.
Whence the languor and irritability felt in summer, when the heat is
long continued, and the nights are spent in restlessness and anxious
oppression. Exhaustion and relaxation of the frame are the
consequence.
As the autumnal equinox verges on, the mornings and evenings get
cooler in relation to the mid-day heat; and about the equinox, the
difference in the temperature of mid-day and midnight is at its
maximum. We have therefore a powerful sedative effect in the morning,
which braces and invigorates the body; a powerful reactive effect at
mid-day, which rouses and stimulates the actions and sensibilities of
the frame; and again towards evening a sedative effect, from the
increasing cold reaching its maximum at midnight.
As the season passes on from the Equinox towards the winter solstice,
the heat of the sun daily diminishes, and the cold gains a daily
preponderance. The sedative effect on the body goes on progressively
increasing, being less and less counteracted by any genial influence
from the solar heat at mid-day; whence the gloom and depression so
universally experienced by the nervous in November and December,
which is more and more felt till the shortest day. So soon as the
minimum of solar influence and maximum of sedative effect on the
body has passed over, the sun gradually acquires more of meridian
influence, and a daily increasing ascendancy over the prevalent cold.
The human constitution at the same time is subject to a proportionate
reactive disposition; which reaction is felt most at noon, and it daily
becomes more and more apparent till the vernal equinox, when we have
the difference betwixt the meridian and midnight temperature again at a
maximum. We have daily a powerful sedative effect in the morning, a

powerful meridian reaction, which again subsides into a sedative
condition on the access of the evening. This daily effect on the
constitution is exactly similar to that at the autumnal equinox, only it
occurs under different circumstances. In autumn it is connected with
departing heat and progressively increasing cold; in Spring it is
connected with progressively diminishing cold and advancing heat.
After the vernal equinox, the difference in the meridian and midnight
temperature gradually diminishes; the daily sedative effect at morning
and evening becomes less and less apparent as general atmospheric
warmth prevails, till towards the summer solstice, the general effect on
the constitution is stimulation and excitement by atmospheric heat.
* * * * *
NOTES OF A READER.
BYRON'S "FARE THEE WELL."
On one occasion of a mediator waiting upon Lord Byron upon the
subject of a reconciliation with his wife, he produced from his desk a
paper on which was written "fare thee well," and said, "Now these are
exactly my feelings on the subject--they were not intended to be
published, but you may take them."--_Lit. G._
EARLY HOURS.
Dr. Franklin published an ingenious Essay on the advantages of early
rising.--He called it "an economical project," and calculated the saving
that might be made in the city of Paris, by using the sunshine instead of
the candles--at no less than 4,000,000l. sterling.
SENSITIVE PLANTS.
Light exercises a very remarkable influence upon the irritability of the
sensitive plant. Thus, if a sensitive plant be placed in complete
darkness, by carrying it within an opaque vessel, it will entirely lose its
irritability, and that in a variable time, according to a certain state of
depression or elevation of the surrounding temperature.

At Brussels, the demand for labour is so great, in consequence of the
number of new buildings, that tradesmen consider they confer a favour
on a customer by the execution of his orders. The lower classes have
become, within the last seven years, extremely dissipated, owing it is
supposed to the increase in the wages of the mechanics and labourers
employed in the numerous buildings erected within that period. During
the Kaermess annual feast of three days, it is calculated 80,000 litres
(pots) are drunk each day!
Cooper, the American novelist, has just published two volumes of
"Notions" of his countrymen, in the course of which he bestows on
them the following surperlative