268 MENTAL AND PHYSICAL EXERCISE. 



with spirit and vigor in their amusements. In walking, 

 skipping, running, leaping in height, length, or depth, 

 swinging, lifting, carrying, jumping with a hoop or pole, 

 they will not only find sources of enjoyment when these 

 exercises are properly regulated, to prevent danger and 

 contention but these enjoyments will also strengthen, 

 and develope their corporeal powers. All imitations, 

 however, of war and military manoeuvres, should be 

 generally prohibited ; as it is now more than time that a 

 martial spirit should be counteracted, and checked in the 

 bud, and those who encourage it in the young, need 

 not wonder if they shall ere long, behold many of them 

 rising up to be curses, instead of benefactors to man- 

 kind. They might likewise be occasionally employed in 

 making excursions, in company with their teacher, either 

 along the sea shore, the banks of rivers, or to the top of 

 a hill, for the purpose of surveying the works of nature 

 and art, and searching for minerals, plants, flowers or 

 insects, to augment the school museum, and to serve as 

 subjects for instruction." 



" If every school had a piece of ground attached to it 

 for a garden, and for the cultivation of fruit trees, pota- 

 tos, cabbages, and other culinary vegetables, children 

 of both sexes, at certain hours, might be set to dig, to 

 hoe, to prune, to plant, to sow, to arrange the beds of 

 flowers, and to keep every portion of the plot in neat- 

 ness and order." 



" Such exercises would not only be healthful and ex- 

 hilarating, but might be of great utility to them in after 

 life, when they come to have the sole management of 

 their own domestic affairs. They might also be encour- 

 aged to employ some of their leisure hours, in construct- 

 ing such mechanical contrivances and devices, as are 

 most congenial to their taste." 



"If instead of six or seven hours confinement in school, 

 only five hours at most were devoted to books, and the 

 remaining hours to such exercises as above mentioned, 

 their progress in practical knowledge, so far from being 

 impeded, might be promoted to a much greater extent." 



" Such exercises might be turned, not only to their 

 physical and intellectual advantage, but to their moral 

 improvement. When young people are engaged in their 



