FREE PLAY IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 817 



ning liis race more ardently than ever, and forgetting to feel 

 where he was hurt. 



This striking contrast between the apathy of French youth 

 and the ardor of English youth is easily explained by the passion- 

 ate attraction of their games, as compared with the depressing 

 aridity of methodical gymnastics. There is no need of invoking 

 difference of races. In the time when we, too, had our national 

 games French youth were as impassioned with tennis, mall, and 

 barette as the Anglo-Saxons are now with lawn tennis, cricket 

 and football. But the taste for sport was lost with us from the 

 moment the attempt was made to introduce a more methodical 

 and, as it was believed, more perfect form of exercise. The coin- 

 cidence will not be denied by any one ; but there was more than 

 a coincidence in it — there was a relation of cause and effect. If 

 this is still doubted, it will be enough to refer to the revival of 

 the taste for physical exercises that was manifested all at once in 

 our universities when efforts were made a few years ago to intro- 

 duce open-air sports ; and this taste is becoming so decided that 

 some persons are already apprehensive that the more serious stud- 

 ies may suffer by the diversion of interest from them. To the 

 other qualities of superiority of games over gymnastics is added 

 the fact that they are performed in the open air. 



Some advocates of gymnastic athletics bring the objection 

 against plays that, while they furnish attractive and easy exer- 

 cises, their facility itself proves that they do not require a great 

 expenditure of muscular force, and are not, consequently, serious 

 exercises. To show how slight is the foundation for this objec- 

 tion, let us take an ancient typical French game, tennis, and give 

 a summary analysis of it. Going from a gymnasium, where 

 young athletes have been pulling hundred-pound chest-weights, 

 the sight of a game of tennis will certainly not at first give the 

 impression of a " serious " exercise ; and one will, perhaps, be 

 tempted to smile at comparing with the effort of gymnasts that 

 of players chasing a minute projectile of twenty grammes with 

 their rackets. Yet the most rugged man, after an hour of this 

 exercise, will be dripping with perspiration, gasping, and will 

 find himself next morning feeling bent all up. One must try 

 it for himself to realize the expenditure of force called out by 

 this exercise, in which the effort is so little apparent. In the ex- 

 ercise of tennis the work is not limited to the motion of the arm 

 in striking the ball. A well-applied racket-stroke requires the 

 bringing of the whole body into action. In the active chase for 

 the ball all the muscles, from the feet to the head, unite in a 

 common effort, or, as the physiologists say, in a synergy, which 

 seems to detach the body from the ground and throw it upon the 

 projectile. The stroke of the racket is a " resultant," or the sum 



VOL. XLII. 56 



