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    Jan. 28, I860.J The deader and Saturday ...

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    Physical Education And The Rifle Movemen...

    burning put like a too combustible firework in a poor forty minutes ; that the age was feverish and railway mad—that there was no boxing as there used to be when Byron sparred with Jackson all the morningj then went to a round of parties , returning home at daybreak- to drink his tenth bottle of soda water ,, and write " Lara ; " that , in fact , every one and everything was grown effeminate , weakly , and degenerate . You would really have thought , to have listened to these old ravens of the Clubs , with their dyed hair and their padded frockcoats , that we were grown such a poor set of weaklings and imbeciles , that all the French had to do was to land at the London Docks , blow up St . Paul's , sack Fleet Street , and

    turn "Westminster Abbey into ah opera-house—no resistance from us being possible , or ' to be expected . They talked as if the Oeoege III . men were made of steel and we of wax ; as if their fingers were bigger than our legs ; as if the swords they wielded in the Peninsula it would take three of us to lift . The drastic influence of public school life and university gymnasiums , of universal boating and cricketing ail over England , they ignored , saying that we now only played at what they ( the three bottle men ) used to work . In fact , when the old Raven left you and went to his intellectual nightly rubber with old Colonel Hakger , Mr . Croker and Mr . Dummil , —rather stiff about the knees and a little indistinct in voice , you looked upon yourself as one of a-disgraced and fallen race—one of England ' s Lower

    Empire , indeed . The spectre removed to the card-room—undismayed by his dyed hair , - the carefully gummed on scalp , and the Regency bow ( even now so killing when in the " cold" manner , so fascinating when in a " warm " tone )—you begin , in the solitude of the lofty club smoking-room , to wonder if your old friend was really right . You , self-assertingly , strike out your hardy arms ; you kick imaginary invaders with the powerful flexors and extensors of the " femur " that work like tough ropes ; you recall wrestling grapples in the country ; you remember fourteen hour-rides- -and six hour walks . You begin to feel contradictory , and an advocate of the age ' s , manhood ; you think of tremendous . replies , that would have blown up the " Haven ¦ " ¦ as with a ten inch shell .

    The next morning , as you roll from your bed- — -the exact warmth of a mild summer morning— -into your broad . shallow pan of a bath , breaking with ji glassy crackle a slight silver paper surface of ice , you begin , however , quite to despise the " Haven , " and to grow less distrustful of the age . That same afternoon you get finally convinced , by accidentally taking up Emerson's " English Tracts , " and finding that he , as a clever , thoughtful , impartial American , who lias seen the world , and with keen eyes too , says ,

    " The English , at the present day , have great vigour of body and endurance . Other countrymen look slight and undersized beside them , and invalids . They are bigger men than the Americans ;" " round , ruddy , and handsome , " he goes on to add , " with a tendency to stout and powerful frames . " He boasts with the pride of a child talking of a father of how we English ride and walk faster than all other people ; how we hunt and trap and shoot all over the four hemispheres , and write sporting books for all the-world . Does this look like degeneracy ? You reflect , and long to go to the club card-room at once , and silence the "Raven . "

    Still , we are secretly so far of the Raven ' s opinion , that we think without more attention being paid to physical education the next generation must -suffer . School is now such a serious affair ; hours of work increase , and drive up hours of play frightened into timid corners . ' . < The use of the globes " is now fro mere ostentation of our Yorkshire friend of Dotheboys' Hall ; children now learn more sciences than they are yoars old . Young ladies are no longer confined to " Calisthenics and the Indian

    clubs , " but entangle themselves in Euclid ' s diagrams and dive deep into hydraulics . Even boys got an inkling of the turnpikegates of examination that must one day be passed before the pl easant , smiling Sinecure country is reached , and brace themselves for the leap . There is less play in life ; rainy days begin earlier in the year ; sunshine recedes back from the frontier of adolescence ; and the schoolmaster , worried by barking rivals and exacting parents , shortens the hours of recreation , and gets into the habit of thinking every hour won from play a goin .

    With the great city population , now thnt hours nro late , and fields shrink so sensitively from the advances of the brick and mortar deluge , there is ' more than ever fear of our young men growing up pale , flabby , and incapable of sustained and vigorous exertion . Only imagine n city clerk now suddenly retiring , after the manner of the Greeks , to a disrobing room within the precincts of his bank , anointing his nude body with Macassak £ ) balmy oil , and making a dash down King William-street , followed by fellow dthlotes , to plunge into the Thames from London-bridge stairs ; when , of course , the polico would follow him in a bout , and take him off to the nearest sitting magistrate , as a lover of sanatory reform , who himself noetlod immediate moral reformation .

    Yet Plato , and all the wise men of Greece that we venerate , and spend half our youth learning to construe , would have re-r fused to believe that any nation could exist whose striplings did not oil themselves daily , wrestle and box , and race and leap , and after that betake themselves , red-hot and dusty , to the necessary bath . So Xenophon was trained to become in his old age u fine , old , fresh Eubaean country gentleman . So Socrates learned to draw his wise saws from the grapples of tlie naked youths of Athens , as he lay watching them under the dry olive trees , musical with the ceaseless cicada .

    Sudden alarms about sanatory neglect indicate the sense of the necessity of some change existing in the mind of the alarmist . It is always your puny liomunculus friend , Avitli no chest , thready voice and fishy eyes , who bores you about the use of the dumbbells , who beats his little band-box of a chest as he asserts that no man can live without boxing daily , and other self-evident fallacies . He is the man who tortures himself with cold water applied at uncomfortable and contrasting moments , who walks constitutionally when nobody else wants to walk , who gets quite fretful , noisy , " arid excited ' praising cold pump water , who requests you to pinch his arm , who insults big draymen , who disdain to touch such a doll of a man , and who he , therefore , thinks

    he has cowed and intimidated . But this does not prove anything against physical education , for peijhaps without these bodily mortifications , Twitter would not now be alive to brag of his stamina . To laugh at exercise advocates because it produces Twitters , is as absurd and unfair as to argue that waterdrinkers are all invalids , because invalids generally have recourse , from sheer debility of constitution , to such cruel remedies for bodily incapacity as temperance or total abstinence . The body is the butt end of the mind , to Use a military metaphor , and we think that this rifle movement will help to strengthen it nationally , just now that we are all getting more

    sedentary and business-like than ever . Your self-complacent man may show us nervous Cowpe its and-fragile Popes ; but we find that iron men like Napoleon , and thinkers like the old soldier and stonecutter , Socrates , have really led and formed the world . Jn fact , our opponent has only got to allow as an hypothesis ; that two brains are of equal capacity , and it at once follows that whichever brain is lucky enough to be backed up by the strongest body—the body that can bear to sit , and think , and work , and act , and produce most in the day , will be the master of the lesser power—the conqueror of circumstances—the . leader of men , and the victor in life ? s race . '

    It is a sinall proof , yet we think we see , even ia the fact of the universal introduction , within the last ten years or so , of morning cold baths , an argument that either our young men need bracing , more than they used to , or that they feel more the necessity of being braced brains soften rrioi-e than they used to do ; heart disease increases ; diet is workimr on us ; doctors tell us that , as in Elujauktii ' s time , sanguineous diseases were paramount , and in the ( . Jeorgiau era gastric diseases ; so

    now , nervous diseases lead off the largest haul of victims into that dark region where the sun is not ; and therefore it is that We rejoice to see the lion youth of England joining the volunteer ranks with such cheerful eagerness . They cannot , after the desk and the ann-ohnij 1 , have too much of the goose-step , of standing-at-ease , of theclriH generally . The lazy mon , who can hardly be induced to walk a mile , can sometimes scarcely be stopped when he has walked two , fo fond has he grown of the exercise of which he was once so ignorant . It cannot hurt a man to make him strong on the log and sure of eye .

    The timid faults of envy and scandal will grow scarcer us men grow healthier . Aji hour ' s drill will restore Bum sis it an altered man to his poor little shrinking wife , As our national stomach improves in tone by exercise , our national temper , will become , perhaps , more courteous and obliging . Tins 33 ritish lion , then , will be less often mistaken for a bear . But one penalty for all these benefits we shall surely pay , and it requires no Mkkun to prophesy them—our club and social meetings , for a time , at least , will be tormented with military in which

    jargon ; gun tackle will crowd every ¦ sitting-room you can take shelter from the dreary monotonies of drill . Voting raen , vain of youth , arrogant of wealth thnfc they really have , and intellect , which they only fancy they have ; will strut about the streets with the air of conquering C / rsaks . in " ( . Juy" dresses , as much like real 3 oldiers as stage supeniuniorarii ^ am , but in their own opinion ready to bury all tlio invading luvmeh in Plumstoad marshes , or to turn Clopham common into another crimson Waterloo . But let us bear all this in good part ; itis only the sinofto that precedes the lire '; and let u . s all be quite

    sure that in the hour of need or porilthoso Bucking A lkxanimshs and beardless MARLHOUouaira would rush on the enciny s cannon as bravely aa our throu hundred LK <> . Nn > A * i : M di . l a sTiort time ago at Balaklava .

    Jan. 28, I860.J The Deader And Saturday ...

    Jan . 28 , I 860 . J The deader and Saturday Analyst . , 81

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 28, 1860, page 5, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_28011860/page/5/