SAINTS, AND THEIR BODIES 23 
It may seem to our non-resistant friends to 
be going rather far, if we should indulge our 
saints in taking boxing lessons; yet it is not 
long since a New York clergyman saved his 
life in Broadway by the judicious administration 
of a “cross-counter ” or a “flying crook,” and 
we have not heard of his excommunication from 
the Church Militant. No doubt, a laudable 
aversion prevails, in this country, to the English 
practices of pugilism; yet it must be remem- 
bered that sparring is, by its very name, a 
“science of self-defence;” and if a gentleman 
wishes to know how to hold a rude antagonist 
at bay, in any emergency, and keep out of an 
undignified scuffle, the means are most easily 
afforded him by the art which Pythagoras 
founded. Apart from this, boxing exercises 
every muscle in the body, and gives a wonder- 
ful quickness to eye and hand. These same 
remarks apply, though in a minor degree, to 
fencing also. 
Passing now to outdoor exercises, —and no 
one should confine himself to indoor ones, — one 
must hold with the Thalesian school, and rank 
water first. Vishnu Sarma gives, in his apo- 
logues, the characteristics of the fit place for a 
wise man to live in, and enumerates among its 
necessities first “a Rajah” and then “a river.” 
Democracies can dispense with the first, but not 
