This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1784. Excerpt:... D J who has experienced habitually the Alertness and (as I may say) Elasticity of the Mind, when all its powers after their natural refreshment wake to new exertions.. v i Relaxation Relaxation is an end which might not obtained. be supposed to be aimed at in Gaming. 'But, in the manner and degree in which Gaming is pursued, it must produce an effect very different from Relaxation. The professed Gamester is a man of Business. And his Business contains not the advantages either of those pccupations which relax and please, or of those which strengthen and improve: the former sort must be such as exercise the Attention much more gently than Gaming does and the latter must have some useful object in view, or call forth the faculties to some steady rational exertions, totally unlike the wild and irregular emotions which agitate the Gamester. The pleasures of the Imagination are, with a peculiar propriety, recommended by Mr. Addison for the purpose of relaxing. And we can scarcely conceive any thing a stronger contrast to these, than deep Play. Not even the ordinary occupations by which men earn a livelihood, are so strongly contrasted to them: if an employment be ever so dull and mechanical, at least it is usually mixed with some casual strokes which now and then light up a momentary brightness in the Imagi. nation. But the rigid Silence required in deep f..... Play, Play, and the total exclusion of all ideas besides those of Main and Chance and the rest of the same class, debar the mind from every pleasing picture, (except what a vicious taste has made to be pleasing,) and chain it down to a Drudgery which would be galling to a very Slave.. I will go drown thought at the Hazard table, fays the Gamester: but he is mistaken. This thought indeed, or that thought...