descendant of that antique one in whose handle rare medicaments were fabled to be concealed. The modern one is simply a rounded club, weighing from four pounds upwards, according to the strength of the pupil; grasping a pair of these by the handles, he learns a variety of exercises, having always before him the feats of the marvellous Mr. Harrison, whose praise is in the "Spirit of the Times," and whose portrait adorns the back of Dr. Trall's Gymnastics. By the latest bulletins, that gentleman measured forty-two and a half inches round the chest, and employed clubs weighing no less than forty-seven pounds.

66

sci

It may seem to our non-resistant friends to be going rather far, if we should indulge our saints in taking boxing lessons; yet it is not long since a New York clergyman saved his life in Broadway by the judicious administration of a 66 cross-counter" or a "flying crook,” and we have not heard of his excommunication from the Church Militant. No doubt, a laudable aversion prevails, in this country, to the English practices of pugilism; yet it must. be remembered that sparring is, by its very name, a ence of self-defence"; and if a gentleman wishes to know how to hold a rude antagonist at bay, in any emergency, and keep out of an undignified scuffle, the means are most easily afforded him by the art which Pythagoras founded. Apart from this, boxing exercises every muscle in the body, and gives a wonderful quickness to eye and hand. These same remarks apply, though in a minor degree, to fencing also.

Billiards is a graceful game, and affords, in some respects, admirable training, but is hardly to be classed among athletic exercises. Tenpins afford, perhaps, the most popular form of exercise among us, and have be

come almost a national game, and a good one, too, so far as it goes. The English game of bowls is less entertaining, and is, indeed, rather a sluggish sport, though it has the merit of being played in the open air. The severer British sports, as tennis and rackets, are scarcely more than names to us Americans, though both are to be practised in New York city.

Passing now to out-door exercises, (and no one should confine himself to in-door ones,) one must hold with the Thalesian school, and rank water first. Vishnu Sarma gives, in his apologues, the characteristics of the fit place for a wise man to live in, and enumerates among its necessities first "a Rajah" and then “ a river." Democrats can dispense with the first, but not with the second. A square mile even of pond water is worth a year's schooling to any intelligent boy. A boat is a kingdom. I personally own one, a mere flat-bottomed "float," with a centre-board. It has seen service, it is eight years old,

has spent two winters under the ice, and been fished in by boys every day for as many summers. It grew at last so hopelessly leaky, that even the boys disdained it. It cost seven dollars originally, and I would not sell it to-day for seventeen. To own the poorest boat is better than hiring the best. It is a link to Nature; without a boat, one is so much the less a man.

Sailing is of course delicious; it is as good as flying to steer anything with wings of canvas, whether one stand by the wheel of a clipper-ship, or by the clumsy stern-oar of a "gundalow." But rowing has also its charms; and the Indian noiselessness of the paddle, beneath the fringing branches of the Assabeth or Artichoke, puts one into Fairyland at once, and Hiawatha's cheemaun becomes a possible possession. Rowing is peculiarly graceful and

2

appropriate as a feminine exercise, and any able-bodied girl can learn to handle one light oar at the first lesson, and two at the second.

.

Swimming has also a birdlike charm of motion. The novel element, the free action, the abated drapery, give a sense of personal contact with Nature which nothing else so fully bestows. No later triumph of existence is so fascinating, perhaps, as that in which the boy first wins his panting way across the deep gulf that severs one green bank from another, (ten yards, perhaps,) and feels himself thenceforward lord of the watery world. The Athenian phrase for a man who knew nothing was, that he could "neither read nor swim." Yet there is a vast amount of this ignorance; the majority of sailors, it is said, cannot swim a stroke; and in a late lake disaster, many able-bodied men perished by drowning, in calm water, only half a mile from shore. At our wateringplaces it is rare to see a swimmer venture out more than a rod or two, though this proceeds partly from the fear of sharks, as if sharks of the dangerous order were not far more afraid of the rocks than the swimmers of being eaten. But the fact of the timidity is unquestionable; and I was told by a certain clerical frequenter of a watering-place, himself an athlete, that he had never met but two companions who would swim boldly out with him, both being ministers, and one a distinguished Ex-President of Brown University. This fact must certainly be placed to the credit of the bodies of our saints.

But there is no space to descant on the details of all active exercises. Riding may be left to the eulogies of Mr. N. P. Willis, and cricket to Mr. Lillywhite's "Guide." It is pleasant, however, to see the rapid spread of clubs for the latter game, which a few years since was

practised only by a few transplanted Englishmen and Scotchmen; and it is pleasant also to observe the twin growth of our indigenous American game of base-ball, whose briskness and unceasing activity are perhaps more congenial, after all, to our national character, than the comparative deliberation of cricket. Football, bating its roughness, is the most glorious of all sports to those whose animal life is sufficiently vigorous to enjoy it. Skating is just at present the fashion for ladies as well as gentlemen, and needs no apostle; it is destined to become a permanent institution.

A word, in passing, on the literature of athletic exer cises; it is too scanty to detain us long. Five hundred books, it is estimated, have been written on the digestive organs, but it is hard to find half a dozen worth naming in connection with the muscular powers. The common Physiologies recommend exercise in general terms, but seldom venture on details; unhappily, they are written, for the most part, by men who have already lost their own health, and are therefore useful as warnings rather than examples. The first real book of gymnastics printed in this country, so far as we know, was the work of the veteran Salzmann, translated and published in Philadelphia, in 1802, and sometimes to be met with in libraries, -an odd, desultory book, with many good reasonings and suggestions, and quaint pictures of youths exercising in the old German costume. Like Dr. Follen's Cambridge gymnasium, it was probably transplanted too early, and produced no effect. Next came, in 1836, the book which is still, after twenty years, the standard, so far as it goes, Walker's "Manly Exercises," a thoroughly English book, and needing better adaptation to our habits, but full of manly vigor, and containing good

and copious directions for skating, swimming, boating, and horsemanship. The only later general treatise worth naming is Dr. Trall's recently published "Family Gymnasium," a good book, yet not good enough. On gymnastics proper it contains scarcely anything; and the essays on rowing, riding, and skating are so meagre, that they might almost as well have been omitted, though that on swimming is excellent. The main body of the book is devoted to the subject of calisthenics, and especially to Ling's system; all this is valuable for its novelty, although it is hard to imagine how a system so tediously elaborate can ever be made very useful for American pupils. Miss Beecher has an excellent essay on calisthenics, with very useful figures, at the end of her "Physiology." And on proper gymnastic exercises there is a little book so full and admirable, that it atones for the defects of all the others, "Paul Preston's Gymnastics," nominally a child's book, but so spirited and graphic, and entering so admirably into the whole extent of the subject, that it ought to be reprinted and find ten thousand readers.

These remarks have been purposely confined to those physical exercises which partake most of the character of sports. Field-sports alone have been omitted, as having been so often discussed by abler hands. Mechanical and horticultural labors lie out of the province of this essay. So do those of the artist and the man of science. The out-door study of natural history alone is a vast field, even yet very little entered upon. In how many American towns or villages are to be found local collections of natural objects, such as every large town in Europe affords, and without which the foundations of thorough knowledge cannot be laid? There are scarcely any. One