OF MUSCULARITY AND ELASTICITY 87 



turn our attention to his puny and dispropor- 

 tioned arms, we acknowledge the cause that, 

 in the one instance, exercise has produced per- 

 fection, and that, in the other, the want of it has 

 occasioned deformity. Look to the legs of a poor 

 Irishman travelling to the harvest with bare feet : 

 the thickness and roundness of the calf show that 

 the foot and toes are free to permit the exercise 

 of the muscles of the leg. Look, again, to the 

 leg of our English peasant, whose foot and ankle 

 are tightly laced in a shoe with a wooden sole, 

 and you will perceive, from the manner in which 

 he lifts his legs, that the play of the ankle, foot, 

 and toes are lost, as much as if he went on stilts, 

 and, therefore, are his legs small and shapeless. 



And this brings us naturally to a subject of 

 some interest at present : we mean the new 

 fashion of exercising our youth in a manner 

 which is to supersede dancing, fencing, boxing, 

 rowing, and cricket, and the natural impulse of 

 youth to activity. 



By this fashion of training to what are termed 

 gymnastics, children at school are to be urged to 

 feats of strength and activity, not restrained by 

 parental authority, nor left to their own sense of 

 pleasurable exertion. They are made to climb, to 

 throw their limbs over a bar, to press their foot 

 close to their hip, their knees close to their stom- 

 ach ; to hang by the arms and raise the body, 



