delicately nurtured, will often endure hardship better than the followers,"because," says Sir Philip Sidney, "they are supported by the great appetites of honor." But for all these triumphs of nervous power a reaction lies in store, as in the case of the superhuman efforts often made by delicate women. And besides, there is a point beyond which no mental heroism can ignore the body, as, for instance, in sea-sickness and toothache. Can virtue arrest consumption, or self-devotion set free the agonized breath of asthma, or heroic energy defy paralysis? More formidable still are those subtle influences of disease, which cannot be resisted, because their source is unseen. taire declared that the fate of a nation had often depended on the good or bad digestion of a prime-minister; and Motley holds that the gout of Charles V. changed the destinies of the world.

Vol

But part of the religious press still clings to the objection, that admiration of physical strength belonged to the barbarous ages of the world. So it certainly did, and so the race was kept alive through those ages. They had that one merit, at least; and so surely as an exclusively intellectual civilization ignored it, the arm of some robust barbarian prostrated that civilization at last. What Sismondi says of courage is pre-eminently true of that bodily vigor which it usually presupposes: it is by no means the first of virtues, but its loss is more fatal than that of all others. "Were it possible to unite the advantages of a perfect government with the cowardice of a whole people, those advantages would be utterly valueless, since they would be utterly without security."

Physical health is a necessary condition of all permanent success. To the American people it has a stupendous importance, because it is the only attribute of power

in which they are losing ground. Guarantee us against physical degeneracy, and we can risk all other perils, financial crises, Slavery, Romanism, Mormonism, Border Ruffians, and New York assassins; "domestic malice, foreign levy, nothing" can daunt us. Guarantee to Americans health, and Mrs. Stowe cannot frighten them with all the prophecies of Dred; but when her sister Catherine informs us that in all the vast female acquaintance of the Beecher family there are not a dozen healthy women, one is a little tempted to despair of the republic.

The one drawback to satisfaction in our Public-School System is the physical weakness which it reveals and helps to perpetuate. One seldom notices a ruddy face in the school-room, without tracing it back to a Transatlantic origin. The teacher of a large school in Canada went so far as to declare to me, that she could recognize the children born this side the line by their invariable appearance of ill-health joined with intellectual precocity, stamina wanting, and the place supplied by equations. Look at a class of boys or girls in our Grammar Schools; a glance along the line of their backs affords a study of geometrical curves. You almost long to reverse the position of their heads, as Dante has those of the false prophets, and thus improve their figures; the rounded shoulders affording a vigorous chest, and the hollow chest an excellent back.

There are statistics to show that the average length of human life is increasing; and facts to indicate a development of size and strength with advancing civilization. Indeed, it is generally supposed that any physical deterioration is local, being peculiar to the United States. But the "Englishwoman's Journal" asserts that "it is allowed by all, that the appearance of the English peasant, in the

present day, is very different to [from] what it was fifty years ago; the robust, healthy, hard-looking countrywoman or girl is as rare now as the pale, delicate, nervous female of our times would have been a century ago." And the writer proceeds to give alarming illustrations,. based upon the appearance of children in English schools, both in city and country.

We cannot speak for England, but certainly no one can visit Canada without being struck with the spectacle of a more athletic race of people than our own. One sees a large proportion of rosy female faces and noble manly figures. In the shop-windows, in winter weather, hang snow-shoes, "gentlemen's and ladies' sizes." The streetcorners inform you that the members of the "Curling Club" are to meet to-day at "Dolly's," and the "Montreal Fox-hounds" at St. Lawrence Hall to-morrow. And next day comes off the annual steeple-chase, at the "MileEnd Course," ridden by gentlemen of the city with their own horses; a scene, by the way, whose exciting interest can scarcely be conceived by those accustomed only to "trials of speed" at agricultural exhibitions. Everything indicates out-door habits and athletic constitutions.

All this may be met by the alleged distinction between a good idle constitution and a good working constitution,

- since the latter often belongs to persons who make no show of physical powers. But this only means that there are different temperaments and types of physical organization, while, within the limits of each, the distinction. between a healthy and a diseased condition still holds ;. and it is that alone which is essential.

More specious is the claim of the Fourth-of-July orators, that, health or no health, it is the sallow Americans, and not the robust English, who are really leading the

world. But this, again, is a question of temperaments. The Englishman concedes the greater intensity, but prefers a more solid and permanent power. He justly sets the noble masonry and vast canals of Montreal, against the Aladdin's palaces of Chicago. "I observe," admits the Englishman, "that an American can accomplish more, at a single effort, than any other man on earth; but I also observe that he exhausts himself in the achievement. Kane, a delicate invalid, astounds the world by his two Arctic winters, and then dies in tropical Cuba.” The solution is simple; nervous energy is grand, and so is muscular power; combine the two, and you move the world.

One may assume as admitted, therefore, the deficiency of physical health in America, and the need of a great amendment. But into the general question of cause and cure it is not here needful to enter. In view of the vast variety of special theories, and the inadequacy of any one, (or any dozen,) it is wiser to forbear. Perhaps the best diagnosis of the universal American disease is to be found in Andral's famous description of the cholera: “Anatomical characteristics, insufficient ; cause, mysterious; nature, hypothetical; - symptoms, characteristic ; — diagnosis, easy; - treatment, very doubtful.”

Every man must have his hobby, however, and it is a great deal to ride only one hobby at a time. For the present the writer disavows all minor ones. He forbears giving his pet arguments in defence of animal food, and in opposition to tobacco, coffee, and india-rubbers. He will not criticise the old-school physician whom he once knew, who boasted of not having performed a thorough ablution for twenty-five years; nor will he question the physiological orthodoxy of Miss Sedgwick's New England artist,

who represented the Goddess of Health with a pair of flannel drawers on. Still less is it needful to debate, or to taste, Kennedy's Medical Discovery, or R. R. R., or the Cow Pepsin.

"The wise for cure on exercise depend,"

saith Dryden,

tion.

and that is the argument now in ques

!

A great physician has said, "I know not which is most indispensable for the support of the frame, food or exercise." But who, in this community, really takes exercise? Even the mechanic commonly confines himself to one set of muscles; the blacksmith acquires strength in his right arm, and the dancing-master in his left leg. But the professional or business man, what muscles has he at all? The tradition, that Phidippides ran from Athens to Sparta, one hundred and twenty miles, in two days, seems to us Americans as mythical as the Golden Fleece. Even to ride sixty miles in a day, to walk thirty, to run five, or to swim one, would cost most men among us a fit of illness, and many their lives. Let any man test his physical condition, either, if he likes work, by sawing his own cord of wood, or, if he prefers play, by an hour in the gymnasium or at cricket, and his enfeebled muscular apparatus will groan with rheumatism for a week. Or let him test the strength of his arms and chest by raising and lowering himself a few times upon a horizontal bar, or hanging by the arms to a rope, and he will probably agree with Galen in pronouncing it robustum validumque laborem. Yet so manifestly are these things within the reach of common constitutions, that a few weeks or months of ju dicious practice will renovate his whole system, and the most vigorous exercise will refresh him like a cold bath.