PHYSICAL EDUCATION. . 453 



mately be reclaimedj and here and there the moral desert of asceticism 

 has already begun to bloom with flowers from the revived seeds of 

 Grecian civilization. 



Monachism, at least, is fast disappearing ; in this age of railroads 

 and steam-engines we have no time for positive self-torture d la Simon 

 Stylites. But our commercial Pecksniffs have found it a time- and 

 money-saving plan to stick to the negative part of the anti-pleasure 

 dogma, and hope to atone for the d-reary materialism of our daily fac- 

 tory-life by the still drearier asceticism of a Puritan sabbath : six days 

 of misery in the name of Mammon, balanced by one day of sixfold 

 misery in the name of Christ. " Worldly pleasures " are still under the 

 ban of our spiritual purists ; daily drudgery and daily self-denial are 

 still considered the proper sphere of a law-abiding citizen, and special 

 afflictions a special sign of divine favor. Life has become a socage- 

 duty ; we do not think it necessary to alleviate the distress of our poor 

 till it reaches a degree that threatens to end it. We have countless 

 benevolent institutions for the prevention of outright death, not one 

 benevolent enough to make life worth living. Infanticide is now far 

 more rigorously punished than in old times ; we enforce every child's 

 right to live and become a humble, tithe-paying Christian, but as for 

 its claim to live happy we refer it to the sweet by-and-by. We shud- 

 der at the barbarity of the Caesars, who permitted the combat of men 

 with wild beasts, to cater to the amusement of the Roman populace ; 

 but we contemplate with great equanimity the misery of millions of 

 our fellow-citizens, wearing away their lives in workshops and fac- 

 tories ; millions of children of our own nation and country, who 

 have no recreation but sleep, no hope but oblivion, to whom th^ 

 morning sun brings the summons of a taskmaster and the summer 

 season nothing but lengthened hours of weary toil ; nay, we make it 

 the boast of our pious civilization to deprive them of their sole day of 

 leisure, to interdict their harmless sports, lest the noise, or even the 

 rumor of their merriment, might disturb the solemnity of an assem- 

 blage of whining hypocrites. Hence the recklessness, the Nihilism, and 

 the weary pessimism of our times, the melancholy that everywhere 

 underlies the glittering varnish of our social life. Hence also that 

 vague yearning after a happy hereafter, which the murderers of the 

 happy past have made the principal source of their revenues. 



With few exceptions the children of Christendom are stricken with 

 a disease which mirth alone can cure. In North America and North 

 Britain, especially, it is pitiful to witness the slow withering of so 

 many light-loving creatures in the hopeless night of poverty and Sab- 

 batarianism ; more pitiful to see the reviving of their spirits at every 

 deceptive sign of dawn, the expedients of poor, compromising Nature, 

 her makeshifts with half-recreations and half-sufficient rest, in the 

 lingering hope of a better future to come only with the repose from 

 which no factory-bell can awaken a sleeper, when after long years of 



