264 MENTAL AND PHYSICAL EXERCISE. 







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 develop 

 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 en- 

 courage 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 mankind. They might likewise be oc- 

 casionally employed in making excursions, in company 

 with their teacher, either along the seashore, 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. 



834. " If every school had a piece of ground attached 

 to it for a garden, and for the cultivation of fruit-trees, 

 potatoes, 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 neatness and 

 order. 



835. " Such exercises would not only be healthful and 

 exhilarating, 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 encouraged to 

 employ some of their leisure hours in constructing such 

 mechanical contrivances and devices as are most congenial 

 to their taste. 



836. " If, instead of six or seven hours confinement in 

 school, only Jive hours at most were devoted to books, and 

 the remaining hours to such exercises as abovementioned, 

 their progress in practical knowledge, so far from being 

 impeded, might be promoted to a much greater extent. 



837. " Such exercises might be turned not only to their 

 ohysical and intellectual advantage, but to their moral 

 improvement. When young people are engaged in their 



