Grote says:

"These public Syssitia, [mess-tables,] under the management of the Polemarchs, were connected with the military distribution, the constant gymnastic training, and the rigorous discipline of detail, enforced by Lycurgus. From the early age of seven years, throughout his whole life, as youth and man no less than as boy, the Spartan citizen lived habitually in public, always either himself under drill, gymnastic and military, or a critic and spectator of others."

"Xenophon, a warm panegyrist of Spartan manners, points with some pride to the tall and vigorous breed of citizens which the Lycurgic institutions had produced. The beauty of the Lacedæmonian women was notorious throughout Greece. . . . . . It is in this universal schooling, training, and drilling, imposed alike upon boys and men, youths and virgins, rich and poor, that the distinctive attribute of Sparta is to be sought, not in her laws or political constitution."

The Gymnasium was the name of the general institution for physical education and public resort; the Palæstra, of the particular portion of it devoted to games and feats of strength, as boxing, wrestling, running, leaping, throwing the discus, and other exercises of a like character. These just named were in fact the celebrated Pentathlon, or five games of Greece.

Eschenburg says that "the corporeal exercises, especially in the early times, were viewed by the Romans as a more essential object in education than the study of literature and science." The system of athletic sports was connected not only with education in the ancient commonwealths, but also with religion and the interests of the state. It was discerned by the founders of civil order, that a thorough physical growth, and a sound state of body among a people, were inevitable elements of power in a political organization. These manly exercises and games of strength did something to redeem for a season the republics from the vices of overgrown power and luxury, and only when they were perverted. to the nourishing of profligacy, and to the cruel pastime of the gladiatorial shows, did moral corruption and political decline keep even pace, and hurry on the downfall of pagan civilization. The evil was not in this feature of the ancient life, but other causes converted even this boon of the finest bodily development into a bane.

Besides the gymnasium and palæstra, where the youth were trained to vigorous exercises and sports, a system sustained in Sparta at the public expense, and compulsory on every citizen, there were various games, like the Olympian, to arouse the utmost emulation between both individuals and states, and to reward proficiency in physical culture with the most brilliant and coveted honors. The simple crown of oak or pine leaves, set on the brow of the victor, was hailed as a symbol of renown all over Greece, and almost stood for immortality of fame; while both beauty and letters lent their presence and charms to these state occasions, the poet reading his lyric or epic, and the historian his world-enduring narrative before the assembled thousands of their countrymen at the great games.

Some of the old Asiatic nations were not wholly devoid of physical discipline as a part of their education, and even among the rude tribes of North America the young warrior was early trained by diligent exercise to hurl the spear and bend the bow adroitly. Xenophon, in his Cyropædia, in describing the Persian education, says:

"The boys who frequent the public places of instruction pass their time in learning justice; and tell you that they go for that purpose, as those with us, who go to learn letters, tell you that they go for this purpose. They learn, besides, to shoot with the bow, and to throw the javelin. These things the boys practise till they are sixteen or seventeen years of age; then they enter the order of youth. The tribes that remain at home pass their time in practising the things they learned while they were boys, in shooting with the bow, and throwing the javelin. These they continue exercising in emulation one against another, and there are public games in these kinds, and prizes set."

It was in such a discipline that Cyrus the Great, the hero of Xenophon's historical romance, was trained, and taught, as the two most princely accomplishments, to speak the truth, and hurl the javelin. This may seem to be a rather meagre programme of education in our days of numerous and distracting studies; but whatever of dignity naturally associates itself with the name of Persian in history is derived in no small measure from these two elements of a moral and a

physical athletism, both of which we have, perhaps, too much lost from sight in our overweening devotion to intellectual power.

Vitruvius gives a description of the Greek gymnasium. One part was devoted to the Pentathlon, or five games, and other parts to seats, promenades, and places of instruction. Besides the palæstric exercises, there were the orchestric, or those which pertained more to the culture of grace in manner, as dancing and gesticulation.

The exercises of the Romans were specially designed, either to train a nation to bear arms, or to prepare combatants for the gladiatorial exhibitions. They took many hints from the Greeks, as it was their national characteristic to follow whatever they found good in any other people. The originality of the Roman civilization consisted, indeed, in its composite order. There were, according to Lipsius, three principal species of exercises for the Roman soldier; namely, of burdens, of work, and of arms. Under the first it was no light task to carry his food, his utensils, his means of fortification, and his weapons of war, offensive and defensive. His labors were often arduous almost beyond credibility, in pitching the camp, digging trenches, throwing up fortifications, building bridges, and digging military mines. Besides all these there were specific exercises of walking, running, leaping, swimming, the palaria or sham-fight, hurling the spear, javelin, dart, and arrow, and vaulting. The gladiators were exercised and dieted under regular teachers, and trained in the most severe and careful manner, by a great variety of movements, both with and without arms, to be expert and powerful, both in attacking men and beasts, and in defending themselves against assault. Thus the gymnastic art, which in its origin was designed as a branch of education, and was taught and practised almost as among the fine arts, came at last to the ignoble uses of mere brute strength, and deeds of cruelty and bloodshed. It was, undoubtedly, this desecration of physical culture which has so largely indisposed the modern world to the revival of the gymnastic art. Men are not willing to believe that any good can come out of the gymnasium and the palæstra. Christendom remembers with bitterness the ten

Roman persecutions, and the awful orgies of amphitheatrical martyrdom.

Still we cannot doubt, as we have said, that these splendid nations of antiquity owed not a little of their eminence above the average historic level to muscle as well as to mind, and to mind through muscle. They gymnasticized themselves into power, and all the dynamical forces of both soul and body were immensely accelerated in speed, hardened into endurance, fortified by habit, made nimble and expert by unceasing practice, and multiplied by skilful combinations. Both Plato and Aristotle required that boys should be trained in the bodily exercises of the gymnasium for several years before entering upon their studies, and that such exercises should not then be remitted. The former says: The excess

of corporeal exercises may render us wild and unmanageable, but the excess of arts, sciences, and music makes us too trifling and effeminate; only the right combination of both makes the soul circumspect and manly."

Testimonies are also given to the value of these exercises in curing and in preventing disease, as well as in physical education. Herodicus, the celebrated teacher of Hippocrates, cured himself and many others of diseases by means of gymnastics, and lived to the age of one hundred years. Galen, the great medical philosopher, who was feeble until he was thirty years old, became strong and healthy by devoting several hours every day to gymnastic exercises. He said that the best physician was he who was the best teacher of gymnastics.

The athletic and dietetic advantages of this system were indeed insufficient to avert that awful lapse and subsidence of society, the decline and downfall of the Greek, and subsequently of the Roman civilization. Not possessing the conservative, and at the same time reformatory, element of the Christian faith, that splendid development of human genius and power had no sufficient rampart against the incursions of the lower passions and appetites. But "fair weather came out of the North"; uncorrupted tribes from the forests of Germany grafted a healthy scion on the tree of humanity, and renewed the hope of the world.

One of the earliest writers after the restoration of letters, who discussed the subject in question, was Mercurialis, whose work, in six books, on "The Celebrated Gymnastic Art of the Ancients," was published at Venice in 1569. Yet earlier, Albert Durer, the engraver, had written a work, still in manuscript, entitled, "Reflections on the Handling of Arms,” which had some reference to physical training. But the most voluminous writer upon gymnastics was Guts-muths, in the eighteenth century, in Germany. He was an assistant teacher in the school of Salzmann in Thuringia, a clergyman, and the first modern instructor of youth who taught bodily exercises, as running, leaping, swimming, climbing, balancing, as a regular part of education; and the very remarkable fact is stated, that during thirty-two years, in which three hundred and thirty-four pupils from various nations were educated in the establishment, not one death occurred among them.

In the Middle Ages, the tournament, hunting, and war, among the nobility and gentry, and agriculture, mechanics, and sailing, among the common people, supplied the chief resources for physical invigoration. All nations, however, had their manly sports and games of skill and strength, which did something to save the youth from enervation. But not until quite recently has any considerable attention been given to the transcendent value of physical education, and even now it is almost ignored as an art by the most ancient and influential institutions in Europe and America. The very term of Gymnasia itself, applied in modern days to schools of a higher order in Germany, has ceased to convey the idea of bodily exercises as necessarily a part of the course of discipline. The intellect has

"So got the start of the majestic world,

And bears the palm alone."

But this decline of the ancient wisdom of education has not been suffered to proceed without strong protests, and earnest efforts at reformation, the most successful of which have come from the more active nations of Europe, the Swedes, the Germans, and the English.

Many elegant writers have indeed borne emphatic testimony to the value of the gymnastic art; but few positive efforts