at its entrance into life, if it seemed unhealthy; where the daughters of the first families of the state were brought up with more refinement than judgment; mothers exhorted their children to be virtuous, but they urged them still more to be graceful; to hold themselves upright, put back their shoulders, to tighten their waists, to be very abstemious, lest too great a degree of embonpoint should spoil their figures, and render them awkward; physical education was therefore, wanting in Greece. But let us not look to the ancients for models; let our children's education be adapted to the present times; suited to our habits, our manners. All infants do not enter the world strong and healthy; many suffer previously to birth. The great object of education should be to fortify weak organizations; religion, reason, philanthrophy, call on us to strengthen the debilitated child, foretel its wants, and cure its growing infirmities; for what babe, however feeble, is not its parents greatest treasure? But what inconsistency! Philosophers, and other learned men, have strenuously sought to improve the race of dumb animals; they have given an equal degree of attention to the culture of plants: fruits and flowers, have been transplanted and grafted; yet man is left in total neglect, as though he were unworthy of notice; and that it was of greater importance to have fine pine apples, beautiful camelias, than strong and healthy human beings.

According to our acceptation, of physical education, it is not confined to strengthening the muscles, but to the regular and harmonious development of all the organs; to establish good fundamental qualities, as the basis of health and happiness.

It is not any given number of organs that we seek to make perfect; it is not to fill any particular station in life that we wish to qualify individuals, and make them attain the nearest degree of perfection: but, whether in adversity or prosperity, we desire that the physical education given to our children should prove a protecting shield; we would not have it merely confined to those regular organizations, requiring but little care, and who are naturally well developed; but still more to those whose irregular and weak constitutions, demand all the assistance of art and maternal love to supply the deficiencies of nature. To children pitied by society, condemned by the vulgar, beloved only by their parents, well directed physical education is particularly adapted. For deformities of the brain, the chest, the spine, the organs of the senses, are reserved the gifts of physical education, guided by rational physiology.

What we establish here, is not theory, but scientific practice, resulting from observing human infirmities, from palaces to the unwholesome and miserable abode of the poor. Physical education would not be undervalued, if the victims to that

fatal malady, consumption, were numbered. Nature, in the orginal constitution, gives the primitive elements of all education: it is then the province of the physician to appropriate the physical agents of life so as to cultivate the good seeds, and eradicate those that are contrary to a normal and regular development. Medical men may strive to counteract the effects, and the different circumstances which may have influenced the unborn child; yet mothers, nurses, ought to be aware of the watchful care infants require; it may therefore be justly said, that education commences with life from the cradle. Let us then surround the new born babe, whose first cries are so pleasing to a mother's ear; let us assist at the struggle about to take place between this weak being, and the immense world into which it has just entered and before we study the laws of life, and its admirable phenomenon, let us imitate the potter, who prepares the earth before he moulds it: let us listen to the infant's earliest sigh, and endeavour to judge of what material it is formed; and as the happiness and misery of children do not really depend on themselves, we will strive to prepare for them the inestimable treasure of health, and free them, as much as is in our power, from bodily pain.

CHAP. II.

Infancy.

THE barbarous custom respecting children, which existed at Sparta, is universally known. Immediately after the birth of a child, says Plutarch, it was taken from its mother and carried to a place called Lesche, where the heads of the family then assembled, and the infant was examined. If well formed, robust, and all its limbs properly shaped, it was to be brought up, and one of the nine thousandth parts of the inheritance were allotted for this purpose; but if the child was deformed, ugly, and feeble, it was thrown into a place vulgarly called apothetis, as it was considered expedient, both for the good of the child and the public, that it should not live, unless likely to become a vigorous and useful subject.

Had this custom still prevailed, the world must have been deprived of some of its brightest geniuses; for would not Pope and Byron have been cast into the apothetis ?

The ancients placed the highest value on physical strength, which accounts for the care they took in their choice of infants: the less civilization has advanced, the greater the value placed on muscular power. In civilized nations intelligence has dominion, and the power of civi

lization is in the mind; strength is not what is most requisite.

It is strange that those men who for some natural defect might have been cast into the apothetes, by the Lacedemonians, are very often endowed with great mental powers. Poets, painters, historians, philosophers, statesmen, are less remarkable for the beauty of their physical organization, than for the admirable productions of their genius; but warriors were necessary to the existence of Sparta; and the Spartans took little share in the great work of civilization, and in the mental perfection of society. While we look with horror at the barbarous customs of Sparta, let us endeavour to give useful subjects to the state. To accomplish our purpose we must form a kind of tribunal around the infants' cradle; not to condemn it to destruction, but to develop and perfect that organization, which at its entrance into life is but imperfectly sketched.

It is not easy to determine what may be called infantine weakness. Children who come into the world with low cries, difficult respiration; who cannot retain their food, and seem at every instant ready to breathe their last, may indeed, with justice, be considered feeble; but should there merely be a comparative disproportion between the organs; if for instance, the head be more than usually developed, that constitutes deformity, not weakness. Napoleon, in his childhood, had a large head, slim body, and small legs.