ART. III.1. British Manly Exercises; in which Rowing and Sailing are now first described, and Riding and Driving are for the first Time given in a Work of this Kind; as well as the usual Subjects of Walking, Running, Leaping, Vaulting, Balancing, Skating, Climbing, Swimming, Wrestling, Boxing, Training, etc. By DONALD WALKER. Philadelphia: Thomas Wardle. 1836. pp. 285.

2. HUFELAND'S Art of Prolonging Life. Edited by ERASMUS WILSON, F. R. S. Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields. 1854. pp. 328.

3. Prevention and Cure of many Chronic Diseases by Movements; an Exposition of the Principles and Practice of the Movements for the Correction of the Tendencies to Disease in Infancy, Childhood, and Youth, and for the Cure of many Morbid Affections of Adults. By M. ROTH, M. D. London: John Churchill. 1851. pp. 303.

4. Preservation of Health and Prevention of Disease, etc. By B. N. COMINGS, M. D. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1854. pp. 208.

5. Home, School, and Hospital Gymnastics for Physical Development and Strength, the Prevention of Disease, and Restoration to Health. By C. E. LANGDON. Cincinnati. [Unpublished.]

THOUGH mankind have inhabited the earth for at least sixty centuries, it is not a little remarkable how imperfectly as yet they have mastered the philosophy of life, as applied to the most common matters. They are, even under the august names of Civilization and Christianity, still but a species of larger children,- crude, impulsive, and far from having reduced their existence to order and comfort. They are veritable "strangers on the earth," in another sense than the theological one. And what is even more remarkable, that part of the philosophy of life which appertains to their physical wellbeing, though apparently the most tangible and manageable, is quite as rude and unsettled as any portion of their knowledge and their practice. They do not yet know how to eat, drink, dress, dwell, travel, sail, work, exercise, breathe, after the

true dictates of nature. In these arts the civilized nations are often farther from the order of the physical constitution than the wild Indian. Myriads in the European and American capitals yearly fall victims to each one of these necessary processes of our animal life, because they have not yet been brought into complete harmony with, and subordination to, those mighty elements and energies of the natural world in which we are embosomed, and which seem to be on the alert, like a vigilant pursuing force, to pick off all stragglers from the regular rank and file of the army.

If, again, we were to name any part of physical training and habitude as having been specially neglected or ignored by physicians, educationists, and religionists, we should specify Gymnastics, or muscular exercises, as the field of the sluggard, overgrown with briers and thistles. In modern education the intellect is the chief concern, and enthusiasm for progress is drained off in that channel. In medicine and surgery the grand idea is the cure, rather than the prevention, of disease; and the cure too from without, by the application of certain external remedies, rather than the cure from within, by summoning into action those latent forces of the constitution which have lost their normal operation. In ethics, in like manner, almost exclusive attention is bestowed upon specific rules and principles of conduct, and external habits of the moral and social nature, without taking into account the antecedent and underlying condition of the body and the soul, or those tremendous and Cyclopean powers from beneath, which can, and do, with unexpected volcanic explosions, overthrow the stateliest intellectual and moral fabrics, upon which a world of pains has been exhausted; for vice, we are well convinced, is often a habit which complicates itself with some morbid action of the bodily functions, while it lays a polluting hand upon the sacred altar of conscience and the heart. Our nature, however we may divide it off and parcel it out, is still, in a strong sense, one mysteriously combined, married part to part and power to power, and vibrating under the breath of the same consciousness from the very cuticle to the inmost shrine of the immortal spirit.

We are inclined to think, indeed, that the ancients were

much in advance of modern civilized nations in their philosophy of life, so far as it pertained to the necessity and value of physical culture, and the instrumentalities by which they produced a healthy and vigorous state and development of all the corporeal limbs and powers. The Greeks were the most beautiful, and the Romans were the strongest race, that have yet appeared on the earth; and thus both "strength and beauty were in the sanctuary" of pagan worship, as an offering to the Creator of our fearful and wonderful frame. After we have made all due allowance for the transcendent and incomputable gifts of genius which were lavished on the immortal leaders of thought in Greece, and on the mighty men of action in Rome, we find in their vigorous and systematic gymnasticism, carried through centuries, and incorporated into the lifeblood of the people, one source of that unconquerable and immortal energy which glowed in the soul of Plato, and nerved the arm of Cæsar. It is the rule of nature, that we shall have what we work for, and a purer blood was arterialized in Grecian veins, a more electric thrill ran through Roman sinews, than is vouchsafed to sluggard nations. The ancients thus cultivated one means of power which we have sadly neglected and discountenanced; and the eminent and honorable features of noble manhood in the sons of even a pagan age, we are confident, are attributable in no slight degree to the diligent exercises of the palæstra and the gymnasium. We very well know that those institutions were not always pure or high-toned in their moral influence, especially in the later ages of the ancient civilization, but on the whole they were fountains of great vital force. To tell the truth, in these modern times many men are not strong enough to be either good or great, or to do the good and the great. By what a set of morbid poets, irritable philosophers, unwholesome politicians, contentious theologians, crabbed moralists, and soured educationists has the world been filled and afflicted, because, along with other reasons, they have not possessed an harmoniously developed and healthfully working physical constitution! Milton says, "The mind is its own place," and it is a sublime truth; but then for most purposes, and in the ordinary uses of our being, we feel that the body

is the mind's place, and that upon the body's welfare the mind materially depends for its growth and peace. Man is to himself a complex equation, and he cannot work out its solution, unless he uses all the terms which belong to the problem.

We confess that the too paramount object of the ancient gymnastics was to train soldiers for war, and skilful gladiators for the amphitheatre; but the peaceful citizen, and the man of letters and of affairs, shared in the common advantages of so universal and systematic a physical education. The agencies that imparted to the body a more perfect development of beauty and strength, oxygenated the blood, and energized the brain with a purer circulation. The philosopher had a keener wit for his dialogue, and the orator a fuller roll to his eloquence, from the same force that gave Leonidas and his three hundred their terrible energy in battle, and that crowned Cæsar and his legions with the garlands of countless victories.

The origin of Gymnastics is not known, though they were attributed to Esculapius; but they first appear in an organized form in Sparta, where they were chiefly turned to a military use. They were adopted in Athens, and there were more intimately blended with the objects of general education and the refinements of philosophy and poetry. There the gymnasia became the resort of artists of all kinds, and whatever was most wise or cultivated in Grecian life was assembled in the gymnastic halls, which were constructed with architectural beauty, and adorned with pictures and statues. The festivals of the great games, the Olympian, Isthmian, Nemean, and others, also contributed to cherish these exercises, by which the combatants were prepared to display almost incredible feats of strength and skill. The bearing, too, of such a bodily development upon success in intellectual pursuits was distinctly recognized. Thus, after Demosthenes had failed in his first oration before his critical countrymen, and was wandering dejected in the Peiræus, a wise old man by the name of Eunomus, the Thriasian, met him, and remonstrated thus: "You have a manner of speaking very like that of Pericles, and yet you lose yourself out of mere timidity

and cowardice. You neither bear up against the tumults of a popular assembly, nor prepare your body by exercise for the labor of the rostrum, but suffer your parts to wither away in negligence and indolence." Cicero, we are also told, "was of a lean and slender make, and his stomach was so weak that he was obliged to be very sparing in his diet, and not to eat until a late hour of the day"; but he resorted to the schools of Greece, and Plutarch informs us that "his body was strengthened by exercise, and brought to a good habit." Rollin says:

"The Greeks, by nature warlike, and equally intent upon forming the bodies and minds of their youth, introduced these exercises, and annexed honors to them, in order to prepare the younger sort for the profession of arms, to confirm their health, to render them stronger and more robust, to inure them to fatigues, and to make them intrepid in close fight, in which, the use of fire-arms being then unknown, the strength of body generally decided the victory. These athletic exercises supplied the place of those in use amongst our nobility, as dancing, fencing, riding the great horse, &c.; but they did not confine themselves to a graceful mien, nor to the beauties of shape and face; they were for joining strength to the charms of person."

Grote quotes from Aristotle, that

"The Spartans brought to perfection their gymnastic training and their military discipline, at a time when other Greeks neglected both the one and the other: their early superiority was that of trained men over the untrained, and ceased in after days, when other states came to subject their citizens to systematic exercises of analogous character or tendency."

Thucydides, in his History of the Peloponnesian War, says:-/

"The Lacedæmonians were the first who performed their exercises naked, (hence the term gymnastics,) stripping themselves in public, and anointing themselves with oil before they entered the lists; though before, the custom had prevailed at the Olympic games for the champions to wear scarfs about their loins; and it is only a few years since they were quite disused. But even yet, amongst some barbarians, more especially those of Asia, where the matches of boxing and wrestling are in repute, the combatants engage with scarfs around their loins."