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of dancing as the most suitable exercise for young people, to counterbalance the effects of a sedentary life, yet we cannot avoid condemning waltzing as equally injurious to health and morals. The rapid movement of the waltz makes the blood rush to the principal internal organs, the heart, the lungs, and brain.

The galope is decidedly prejudicial to health; no dancer, however intrepid, can long continue the hurried movement; and we are of opinion that neither the waltz nor galope should form any part of the amusement of young people.

The dance of the mountaineers is very lively; the hands are as actively employed as the feet. In Scotland, in the south of France, in the Pyrenes, whether to the sound of the pipes, tambourine, or castanets, the rapid evolutions, render it unfit for growing girls.

Professional dancers offer specimens of deformity in all the parts of the body; the neck is thin, and the muscles that support it are stiff; the chest is narrow, the shoulders protrude, the legs are crooked, the knees turned out, and the whole distortion is so strange, that an exact description appears like an exaggeration, scarcely giving an idea of either man or woman. There is a want of harmony in the different parts of the human frame, that would constitute positive ugliness, if art did not conceal all these acquired defects.

Few persons can imagine the misery concealed beneath the fancy dresses of our opera dancers, when they have performed their part on the stage, and behind the scenes, give way to the fatigue by which they are overpowered. Few dancers could be taken as models, either for the painter or the sculptor; nearly all, have 'bad health; every thing with them is artificial; and those wonderful feats that surprise the public, are rather the effect of nervous excitation, maintained by public applause, than by real strength.

Complaints in the chest are generally caused by violent exertion, which injure the functions of the heart and lungs. Aneurism, cardites, pneumonia, or consumption, generally put an end to the lives of stage dancers. If these remarks do not pass unnoticed, they may be useful in shewing that dancing must, in some instances, be injurious to young girls predisposed to diseases of the heart or lungs.

The allegory of the Sylph is suited to an opera dancer; she is, in fact, the chimera, the golden shadow left for the substance. Decorate your idol, offer it incense, follow it amidst its companions, and when, at last you reach the treasure, the mask falls, and you possess a vulgar being, with an empty head, and cold heart!

CHAP. XXVII.

Observations on Gymnastic Exercises.

We have given an accurate description of the gymnastic exercises, that may be suited to both sexes, which are compatible with the usual mode of education.

The advantages that may be derived, as a means of developing the muscular powers, and giving more activity to the functions of the economy, and grace to the motion of the body, are incontestible. But will it merely suffice to recommend these exercises? Are there no considerations with regard to age, constitution, weather, situation, as contra-indications of gymnastic exercises? Is there nothing to be avoided? Is there no choice to be made, as to the means of developing either a part or the whole of the body? These questions require elucidation. We should have fulfilled our task very imperfectly, if we did not shew the dangers to be avoided, as well as the advantages to be derived.

From the earliest age children may be accustomed to gymnastic exercises. In Colonel Amoros's gymnasium, we have seen them, when only four or five years old, run up and down a ladder with the greatest facility. Our own infant goes

up a ladder, twelve or fifteen feet high, with extreme steadiness and total absence of fear. From the age of seven, appears to us the most desirable time for gymnastic exercises. As we have already said, at this period of life, children are subjected to remain some hours at their studies, confined to their seats. Weak children suffer so much from excess of application, that they have no inclination for amusement, or the legs alone are exercised; hence the superiority of gymnastie exercises over all other diversions, as the whole body is called into action.

The movements of the body are not in general guided by any rule, they have not any object. For instance, a child having a commencement of deviation, and one side of the body more developed than the other, may continue to exercise both parts of the body equally, and thus increase the inequality of power in the muscles.

If in education the importance of well directed recreations were properly understood; if instead of training children like sheep, confining them in the same fold, and leaving them to their own guidance, parents and governesses were to seek advice, as to the exercises best adapted for each pupil, we should have graceful instead of awkward girls; they would possess that ease and elegance which should ever be the appendages of a well directed education; and which, if not a gift of nature, or the result of good habits in early age, is never acquired in later life. Our

attention has been forcibly arrested, by observing an infant of three years old, prefer gymnastic exercises to his usual play-things; the child's chest had been contracted from his birth, but he had not used these exercises many months, before it was expanded; his arms have acquired great strength, and he has not had a single fall. His dexterity and grace are remarkable; he never does any thing awkwardly.

Although from seven, and above that age, is the period best adapted for gymnastics, yet they can be practised with advantage at a much earlier period; it is always desirable to make recreations useful; give children the habit of employing time well, let all their actions have good useful objects; instil into their young minds ideas of utility, and in whatever stations of life it may please Providence to place them, they will derive the benefit of the valuable habits they have been made to acquire.

We have established special gymnastics for young girls; they also require that their time should be well filled up. From the nature of their occupations, and unequal share of labour in social life, man is more than woman habituated to employment. What superiority does a female not acquire, who is early convinced of the propriety of industry, and who does not fancy herself created to spend her life in idleness! Give, therefore, a good direction to the recreations of girls as well as boys; let them learn to make

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