POPULAR EUROUS- 127 



to promote that tendency; and if, on the contrary, following the 

 model of the parent, and in conformity with tlie mysterious laws 

 which regulate its growth, the waist inclines to a less perfect form, no 

 art can control it without producing more or less of deformity, and 

 with the risk of producing more or less of disease. The pronenessof 

 children to mirthful excitement, and the lively activity of their 

 motions which that disposition induces, are as a law of their nature, 

 by which the just development of the fonn is best eflbcted ; and all 

 restraints put upon that activity are opposed to that law, and pro 

 tanto, injurious to the ends for which that law was given. In the 

 modem system of fashionable female education, the young pupils are 

 tasked to such an unreasonable extent as to leave them no leisure for 

 the sportive and active exercises which children require ; and though 

 stooping or lolling, as it is reproachfully termed, is the natural and, 

 therefore, proper position for a weary child long confined to a weary- 

 ing seat, it is denounced as an improper one, and is, perhaps, exchanged 

 for the inclined plane, which is not less wearisome, or for the narrow- 

 seated chair with its pcrpendiculai* back, the well-knoAvn companion 

 of the piano-forte, and which is still worse than the other two ; and, 

 I must add, the well adapted instrument to inflict defoimity upon its 

 occupant. By the aid of these and other analogous means, assisted 

 greatly by the si^'s, the spine of many growing girls becomes 

 deflected laterally from its right line, and a slight curvature once 

 induced in the soft, and therefore yielding vertebrae, soon produces a 

 slight deflexion in the contrary direction below it, and the parallelism 

 of the shoulders and of the shoulder blades is destroyed ; one shoulder 

 becoming lower than the other, and one shoulder blade more projecting 

 than the other, and a permanent distortion is the result. There is, 

 strictly speaking, no disease in these cases, nor is any required for such 

 an eflfect ; for the deflexion from the strait line is simply of a column 

 made up of a great many bones, whose texture in the young is com- 

 ])aratively soft, and being united together by cartilage, will take any 

 direction which pressure and the irregular action of the muscles may 

 occasion. That these are the means, and this the mode, by which, 

 in ordinary cases, a curvature of the spine is induced, may be safely 

 aflTinued, and if any doubt be entertained upon it, we have onlv to 

 appeal to the notorious and striking fact, that whilst the means which 

 I have pohited out as the cause of such cun-ature are exclusively 



