" THOUGHTS ON PHYSICAL EDUCATION." 103 



invigorated by rest. A pupil should never be urged to an excessive 

 exercise of feeble cerebral organs, it being both useless and danger- 

 ous. It is useless because he can in no way become respectable 

 himself, or render high services to others, with such organs ; and it 

 is dangerous, because it may impair his intellect and destroy his 

 health. For the same reason, a youth should neither be encouraged 

 nor permitted to persevere to excess in the exercise of highly sensi- 

 tive and vigorous organs : such practice would be like exposing an 

 irritable or an inflamed eye to a glare of light, or assailing a phre- 

 nitic brain with piercing sounds. By a strict observance of these 

 precepts in seats of education, it is Dr. C.'s opinion that much time 

 might be saved which is now wasted, much evil prevented, and 

 much good accomplished. The necessity of their enforcement is 

 strengthened by the fact that children and youth of precocious and 

 large developments, with unusually active and vigorous talents, ge- 

 nerally possess delicate and sometimes feeble constitutions : their 

 systems are, therefore, the more easily deranged, and should be 

 guarded with the greatest care. 



Dr. Caldwell's philosophy, and his practical instructions on the 

 all-important subject of " Physical Education," are but very par- 

 tially developed in the preceding selections, which aim at little be- 

 yond the offering of inducements to investigate his doctrines, and to 

 apply them in the nursery, the school-room, and the wide theatre 

 of social life, in its manifold and complicated relations. His princi- 

 ples and views are well-illustrated in many places, and improved in 

 others, by the apposite and perspicuous notes engrafted upon his 

 work by its British editor ; and in this extended form the volume 

 merits a high degree of consideration from every person — parent or 

 teacher — who is intrusted with the corporeal or mental superinten- 

 dence of the young and the inexperienced. 



J. K. 



