PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 147 



which fashion and effeminacy load us with. Five hundred millions of 

 our fellow-men wear scarcely any clothing not in Africa and Southern 

 Asia only, but in cold Patagonia and the by no means genial latitudes 

 of the Norfolk Islands. The mantle of the Roman peasant was laid aside 

 in cold weather and generally at the beginning of the day's work. 

 The sculptures of Rome and Greece abound with the representations 

 of nude hunters, shepherds, and artisans. On the friezes of Pompey 

 and the countless vases and entablatures of the Museo Borbonico and 

 the Vatican collection, children, almost without any exception, appear 

 in naturcdibiis. The very word gymnashim was derived from yvfivoa, 

 naked ; and there is every reason to believe that the toga virilis, like 

 the toga prcjetexta^ was worn only on state occasions. Henry's " His- 

 tory of Great Britain" (vol. i, pp. 468, 469) leaves hardly any doubt that 

 the ancient Britons, Picts, and Scots were either wholly or almost 

 naked, " unless their custom of painting their bodies can be considered 

 as clothing." Nor did the south Britons and Romans go naked from 

 poverty, like Darwin's Firelanders. They had clothes, but they re- 

 served them for emergencies, and, though our advanced notions of 

 decency and cleanliness might not permit us to emulate their example, 

 I suspect that, from May to November, the lightest suit of clothes is, 

 from an hygienic standpoint, about the best. The body breathes through 

 the pores as well as through the lungs, and heavy garments obstruct 

 the cutaneous exhalations quite as much as the atmosphere of an over- 

 heated room impedes the process of respiration, and it has been found 

 by actual experiments that the weight of a mantle or heavy coat with 

 woolen shirts and other underwear diminishes the respiratory capacity 

 of the lungs from twenty to twenty-five per cent. (Coale's " Hints on 

 Health," p. 104.) 



Besides, it seems that fresh air exercises on the human skin a cer- 

 tain tonic influence, of which the wearer of thick woolen garments 

 deprives his body. Benjamin Franklin proposed to prevent colds, and 

 even small-pox, by air-baths, and found that he could relieve insomnia 

 by simply removing the bedclothes for a couple of minutes. " I rise 

 early almost every morning," says he, " and sit in my chamber without 

 any clothes whatever, half an hour or an hour, according to the season, 

 either reading or writing. This practice is not the least painful but, 

 on the contrary, agreeable, and if I return to bed afterward, before I 

 dress myself, as it sometimes happens, I make a supplement to my 

 night's rest of one or two hours of the most pleasing sleep that can be 

 imagined." (" A New Mode of Bathing^' Franklin's " Essays," p. 

 215.) 



Nor should we forget the incidental advantages of hardy habits, 

 their invigorating influence on the constitution in general and on the 

 digestive system in particular, nor the fact that effeminacy defeats its 

 own object and exposes its slaves to sufferings unknown to the sons of 

 the wilderness. He who restricts himself to a minimum of clothes in 



