Dear Lady Georgiana,
Nobody has suffered more from low spirits than I have—so I feel for you.
1- Live as well as you dare.
2- Go into the shower-bath with a small quantity of water at a temperature
low enough to give you a slight sensation of cold, 75° or 80°.
3- Read amusing books.
4- Take the short view of human life—no further than dinner or tea.
5- Be as busy as you can in something that absorbs you.
6- See as much as you can of the friends who respect and like you.
7- See as much as you can of those acquaintances who make you laugh.
8- Make no secret of low spirits to your friends, but talk of them freely
—they are always worse for dignified concealment. Beyond friends
be selective who share your low spirits with, lest you be left lower.
9- Enjoy the positive effects that tea and coffee produce upon you.
10- Compare your lot with that of other people.
11- Don't expect too much from human life—a sorry business at the best.
12- Avoid poetry, dramatic representations (except comedy), music, serious novels
and melancholy sentimental people, they are all the sort of thing that is likely
to excite feelings or emotion that does not result in an inner active benevolence.
13- Do good, and endeavour to please yourself through pleasing others to every degree.
14- Be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue.
15- Make the room where you commonly sit gay and pleasant.
16- Struggle little by little against idleness.
17- Don't be too severe upon yourself, or underrate yourself, but do yourself justice.
18- Keep good blazing fires.
19- Be firm and constant in the exercise of rational religion.
Believe me, dear Georgiana, your devoted servant, Rev'd Sydney Smith
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