PHYSICAL EDUCATION.

How many of the good qualities of Englishmen do we owe to our love of games and field-sports! How many of the splendid empires we have founded in every quarter of the globe have had their root and spring in the tussles at football at Eton, the annual boatraces on the Thames, or the cricket-matches on the thousand downs and heaths throughout broad England! The dominant race of the earth-that race which has already seized upon every unoccupied corner of the world, and mastered the most thickly peopled-is dominant because it is great and masculine, because its tastes and habits lead to self-reliance, and because its breeding leads to the development of endurance, courage, and pluck. We have been so accustomed to the habits that foster these noble qualities that we do not, we believe, thoroughly appreciate them—nay, we do not perceive that a current of opinion has set in among a certain small minority amongst us which, if carried to its full extent, would do much to unman the Englishman and to degrade his physical nature to the Continental standard. We have only to look across the Atlantic to see how easily

the healthy, jolly, muscular Englishman can degenerate into the sallow, dyspeptic, lantern-jawed Yankee. No doubt the influence of climate has very much to do with this falling-off of the race: at the same time, it cannot be denied that a very large share of this deteriorating process is due to the false habits of our descendants themselves. A New England farmer is ruddy enough and stout enough, but your citizen of New York is so different a creature that we scarcely can recognize him as of the same race. The Philadelphia Evening Journal, in an admirable article upon the sorry appearance of the American citizen, thus draws a typical portrait :

The incipient man (we take an extreme case) is a thin, frail creature. His face is sharp and sallow, and has a bleared and bilious appearance. His back can be spanned with both hands, and there will be some hand to spare. The muscles of his arm consist of soft, loose lumps, which give to the touch; his chest, even with the aid of stiff-starched dickey and bulging vest, don't protrude perceptibly, and never makes the mildest attempt at a heave; his legs are matters to be implicitly believed in without any solid proof as to their reality. In fact, the last-named members have become so appallingly lean and same-all-the-way-up, that the tailors have established a wide, flabby style of integuments, into which they slip and are lost, the external effect on the casual observer being agreeably deceptive.

Such is the picture drawn by one of themselves of an American man! Out of the solid Englishman, how comes it that the product is this wretched scarecrow? The editor himself gives the reply-the body is wholly neglected for the mind; there is no such thing in the States as manly games. If you were to ask an American "to take a constitutional," he would stare

with wonder; the Yankee schoolboy would think the English lad mad to strain so at football, or to try his wind in the foot-race or the boat-match. The fairer half of creation across the "herring-pond" have still further degenerated from the standard of their mothers of England; flat-breasted, round-backed, and "rotten before they are ripe," to use a vulgar but forcible expression, instead of being, as was said of Michael Angelo's women, " models of generation," they only seem capable of passing on a fast declining race. The breezy ride upon the heath, the long country walk, the natural attitudes of the maidens of the old country, are unknown to them, and we see the result; they are old women at forty, with black teeth and withered frames.

The New York Times in an able leader says :

The unbalanced despotism of the intellect is the sorest social curse under which we labour in the United States. Sports of all kinds, and especially the hearty athletic sports which develop the body with the brain, and bring forward the sharp, quick, active qualities of what may be termed the "physical" mind in an equal degree with the subtler faculties of ratiocination, have never been encouraged among us as they should have been. Our muscular nature rarely gets a fair chance in our life. We exist by and for the nerves; and it is no fanciful theory which attributes the sudden excesses and equally sudden relapses of political feeling, the partizan intolerance, and the coquetish impatience of our public life in no small degree to the want of national games and pastimes, mainly joyous and earnest.

No greater instance of the national importance of physical training could be given than the course the American Civil War is now taking. Notwithstanding the tropical climate in which the Southern soldiers

have been "raised," yet their athletic habits and their perpetuation of old English exercises have rendered them far more than a match for the reedy Yankee,-so much so, that we have seen them successively conquering in every engagement, and performing marches which have completely bewildered and circumvented their enemy, who, although bred in a colder climate, has ignored all physical training, and has reduced his manhood to the pitiable scarecrow described by the Philadelphia Evening Journal. When, in the hour of a nation's agony, it has to appeal to the last resort of battle, the value of physical education becomes but too apparent; and we do not doubt that, in the great struggle we now see being brought to a conclusion in America, the Federals would not have lost honour, as they most certainly will empire, had they trained themselves for soldiers by the sports and pastimes they should have learned in their youth.

Whilst Brother Jonathan awakens to a sense of his error, we fear there is a tendency, on the part of the authorities of some of our great schools, to fall off from our good old ways. Dr. Hawtrey, some years since, attempted to abolish the annual cricket-match once played in London by the Etonians; and now we are given to understand that boating is considered injurious to the rising generation. We have heard it stated by University authorities that the majority of the boats' crews that pull in the Oxford and Cambridge match are either ruptured or affected with aneurisms! That a poor weakling may overstrain himself here and there in these trials of strength and

With

endurance, we do not doubt; but to deny this splendid exercise to the youths of our great schools on account of these exceptional breakdowns, would be as unreasonable as to prohibit the use of wine or spirits because "Stiggins" gets drunk. The universities and the great public schools, as we have before said, set the fashion of games and sports to the youth of this country; and we think that medical men should express themselves heartily as to the wrong direction these schools are now taking in these matters. respect to the more manly sports of the people, there cannot be a doubt that the numerous Acts of Enclosure have powerfully affected them for the worse. The humane tendencies of the age have banished all the rougher sports of our ancestors. Pugilism, bullbaiting, bear-baiting, dog-fighting, cock-fighting, have justly gone; but what have we in their stead? Physical force is ignored. A boy must not be whipped at school if he has done wrong; but the enlightened philanthropy of the present day substitutes an imposition which gives him a headache! With all our respect for the philanthropy of the age, we cannot help thinking that, as regards physical education, it has been content to destroy without building up--to push the head at the expense of the thews and sinews; and to make a clever, sharp lad, instead of a strong, enduring, and self-reliant man. Woe be to England when these qualities shall have departed from her sons! They may be adepts in all the "ologies;" but they will be no longer the bold, healthy, out-of-door Englishmen, whose good sense springs from their

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